Fast alerts at fire stations

A Huntington Beach company is improving the response time of

emergency personnel -- in their city as well as in surrounding

communities.

Westnet, a local company in business for more than 25 years, has a

line of products designed to streamline fire station operations, said

Kelly McGeorge, the company’s director of marketing.

The newest system, called Smart Station, allows 911 call

information to get to firefighters more quickly.

The Huntington Beach Fire Department has used Westnet’s products

in their fire stations for more than 10 years, said Huntington Fire

Chief Duane Olson.

“It’s been very valuable,” Olson said. “It provides us with that

emergency pre-alert prior to the dispatch.”

The Huntington Beach Fire Department has been so pleased with the

Westnet products that it plans to upgrade to a more sophisticated

call alert system within the next year, Olson said.

In Newport Beach, Westnet products are also coming in handy.

After months of testing out a new call-alert system in the Lido

Isle fire station, the Newport Beach Fire Department has seen an

improvement in response time and plans to implement the system in all

stations.

As soon as a 911 operator answers an emergency call, preliminary

information about the call is sent to the fire station and broadcast

on a loudspeaker.

Firefighters can then gather appropriate equipment and get out the

door between 20 and 60 seconds faster than before, said Newport Fire

Capt. Tim Boland.

“If you’re trying to get to some place in two to three minutes for

a cardiac arrest, 30 seconds is a long time,” said Terry Ulaszewski,

support services manager for the department.

Different types of calls -- structure fires as opposed to medical

aid, for instance -- require different types of equipment. The more

time firefighters have to prepare, the better they can serve the

public.

“Certainly, anytime we’re at a scene sooner, it’s better for the

patient,” said paramedic Ty Lunde.

First-In Fire Station Alerting has been undergoing testing by the

fire department since April 2005. Before that, the department

contracted with Westnet for other equipment, Boland said.

The Smart Station units, which resemble flat lighting fixtures,

are scattered throughout the fire station. They are on the ceilings

of nearly every room and on the wall next to the beds in the

dormitory.

When a call comes in, the unit lights up -- with a red light as

well as another color depending on the type of call -- and a

prerecorded human voice calmly alerts firefighters to the type of

incident.

Under the current system, as the operator talks to the caller, the

information is entered into the CAD system -- computer-aided dispatch

-- and a computer contacts a dispatcher.

The dispatcher notifies the appropriate fire station, alerting

firefighters to the kind of incident so they can gather the

appropriate gear and choose the proper vehicle.

With the Smart Station, preliminary information about the type of

call is sent directly to the fire station at the same moment the

information is sent to the dispatcher.

By the time more detailed information is provided to the fire

station by the dispatcher, the firefighters are already on their way

out the door, Ulaszewski said.

And there’s more to the Smart Station than faster response times,

McGeorge said.

“Our primary emphasis is reducing response time and reducing

firefighter stress,” McGeorge said.

When a firefighter is awakened in the night to respond to a call,

it’s an adrenaline shock that can lead to chronic stress problems,

McGeorge said.

The units in the dorm emit a human voice alerting them to the call

and display a soft red light, each of which are specially designed to

wake the firefighter without causing an unnecessary spike in heart

rate, McGeorge said.

“Our system is designed to reduce that stress by using red

lighting so they’re not shocked optically, and using cardiac-kind

tones,” McGeorge said.

Capt. Dennis Edwards said the “easy wake up” is popular with the

firefighters.

“It’s not as intrusive and abrupt in the middle of the night --

it’s a softer wake up, and it does get us responding quicker,”

Edwards said.