Morning Lineup – October 14

You know, the advances and improvements in the field of electronic technology have become a torrent of constant change.  We are seeing marvelous communications devices come onto the consumer market and within a short time they are available at a low enough price that allows anyone to get them.

Unfortunately, the cumbersome process of governmental budgeting, bid and purchase often leaves our emergency services scrambling to keep up.  For instance, just look at how relatively few fire and rescue services use a CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system to dispatch and maintain communications with their units.  My own department phased in its CAD system in 1984, over 20 years ago, and yet the majority of emergency services are still using voice radio for dispatch and mobile control.  But how many of the departments that use CAD now are equipped to handle today’s technological contacts with the citizens?

I have in mind the London terrorist bombings just over two years ago in July, 2005.  One of the things that caught my attention was the immediacy in the reporting of the event by the television stations capturing and retransmitting the cell phone pictures from passers-by.  That really fascinated me.  First of all, I didn’t know until then that cell phones could take pictures.  But to just send the pic along as part of a phone conversation is amazing.  And the television networks were equipped to translate the digital information readily into a television signal.

Now suppose your 9-1-1 dispatch center had that sort of capability.  A citizen who is nearby when a highway accident takes place, for example, could call 911 and along with giving the location and what happened, they could send along an image of what is involved such as a truck’s cargo.  Or if a fire is starting,  what’s burning and what is the potential?  The possibilities are endless.  Just look how that could enhance not only the level of response to an incident, but for the officers size-up could begin immediately.  For all units the pictures could be passed along to the CAD terminals and a much better decision on response and positioning could be made.

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Is anybody doing this now?  I haven’t heard of it, but surely somebody is moving into the 21st century.  Is anybody even planning to upgrade their system to accommodate this technology?  You can bet your bippy  that already citizens are trying to send the cell-pics to the dispatchers.  But on the other hand, a lot of places don’t even have basic CAD service yet and that’s been around for over 20 years.

Ok, let’s get the equipment checked out.   I’ll see you at the coffee table.

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Shouldn’t your battalion chief
have one of these now?