|
Fire Department enters the
electronic age
By Mike Berger
Citizen Staff
During the
last few weeks, the Fire Department has started the process of
streamlining all calls, reports, logs, incidents,
investigations, budgets and billing online.
“We are now
in the electronic age,” said Fire Chief Tim Ronayne, “and I am
very happy to see it.”
 Ronayne said
going electronic was no easy task but took years of planning and
coordination by various Canton town officials, including members
of the Fire Department, Louis Jutras, the town information
systems manager, the engineer’s office and even members of the
assessors and building offices.
“This will
really help the Fire Department, the ambulance, and everything
we do,” Ronayne said. “It is a tool to help manage the Fire
Department to become more efficient in today’s electronic age.”
One of the
biggest differences involves the logging of all calls. Going
back to the origins of the Fire Department in the 1800s,
dispatchers hand wrote all calls in large journal books. Today,
calls are logged in electronically by the dispatchers and then
reports are logged in by incident commanders.
About three
years ago, the planning started for transitioning the department
to computers after town meeting voted to appropriate $100,000
for a computer software program. Ronayne said the goal was to
coordinate all department information online, including incident
calls, schedules and vacations, motor vehicle maintenance,
ambulance calls and permitting.
Jutras said
the initial challenge was to find the right vendor at the right
price who could meet the department’s needs. And once the
purchase was made, the challenge then became fitting the
software into all of the department’s computers, including 13
work stations inside the building, laptop computers for the two
engines and ambulances, seven laptop units in command vehicles,
and two portable laptop computers. Once the software was
installed, the process of training all personnel began.
One of the
first assignments was coordinating every road and street number
into a GPS map plan, which is now on all engines and ambulances.
This will help department personnel, especially newer members,
get to a destination with accurate directions and will also help
them when responding to mutual aid calls from other communities.
For example,
if a call now goes to a specific road or street number,
information will appear on the screen detailing the history of
the address, including previous calls, locations of the fire
alarm boxes and inspection history. The system also has the
potential to store photos of the interior and exterior of the
house or building.
Ambulances
also will have the capability of informing paramedics about
previous calls to an address and patient history, and once
paramedics complete the call, ambulance reports can be sent
immediately for billing. Ruane said billing can be done by the
hour instead of weekly reports.
When
firefighters handled hazardous waste calls, information on a
particular substance was found in three-ring binders. Now,
firefighters will have instant information on a particular
chemical and how to treat it.
Also gone
will be the three-ring binders for vehicle maintenance. Ronayne
said he will have instant recall of all truck and vehicle
maintenance and repairs.
Besides the
town meeting appropriation for software, the department also
received many computer donations from groups such as Emerson &
Cuming, the Canton Association of Industries, and the Salah
Foundation.
July was the
first milestone for the department as the system came online and
dispatchers began handling all calls electronically. In August,
all mobile data terminals in all vehicles and trucks will be
online, and by October, all ambulances will come online.
After
October, members of the planning team will come together to see
how all units are handling the information transfer and continue
to plan for future computer steps.
August 28, 2008
Return
to Past Articles Page
|
