FireLink

I am a city fire fighter/training officer and one of my concerns is our dispatchers not paging our fire dept. to local vehicle accidents. You as a dispatcher when do you page out a fire dept. to an accident? How bad does the accident have to be?

Our FD only gets toned out right away if there is a known injury. If no injury then none of us go

Fire and EMS are sent to pretty much every wreck in our county.

Every communication center should have SOP's that state what should be done.  The SOP's should have been created with the FD's, PD's and Comm center all sitting down and discussing the SOP's.

My agency dispatches for 4 FD's.  None of them respond on property damage only accidents as that would serve no purpose.  2 of them respond on injury unknowns.  The other 2 respond to confirmed injuries only.  The determination is based on the info we get from the caller or callers.

In my county we have fully paid ems and vol. fire dept. when a wreck happens our dispatchers sends an deputy to see the accident and if ems is needed they tone us out.  they wont dispatch fire untill ems gets on scene and ask for it not before then. The really bad thing is that most wrecks happen about 20 mins out of town. so by the time fire is arrives on scene it been almost an hour since the first call.

Our EMS trucks and Fire trucks are in the same station. And if our EMS truck is dispatched with city (or vise versa)(we are county) they will mend City Fire Dispatch/County Fire dispatch/EMS dispatch together so it will go over all the channels but only the responding unites needed tones will go off.

In our county Ems and Fire/first responders go to every injury accident.

unfortunately,  without knowing what kind of mood our dispatchers are in, sometimes we get hit out automatically,  and sometimes we don't.  we are supposed to get hit out automatically as long as a squad is being dispatched.  in our rural area, we never know where the squad is coming from.  most surrounding squads have very large coverage areas.  it is my opinon,  for that reason,  all fire dept's should be alerted....just in case.   it's bad enough we have to all go to the station first,  then get the trucks.  there have been numerous occasions where we beat ems and pd to the scene and we must administer medical aid before the squad arrives.  there are quite a few of us in our station that will be attending emt in the fall.  hopefully, we will be able to establish a qrs ( quick response unit) to run with ems.  which is another snag.  the ems chief of each squad,  must aprove the fire dept's ability and response before they establish such a system.  doesn't make sense to me,  red tape i guess.  i thought we were all here to do the same thing..... protect the public.                                                       

 oh yeah,  i've always wondered,  why police get the info over the radio,  sometimes 2-5 minutes before the fire/ems is notified.

cityfire3 says ...

I am a city fire fighter/training officer and one of my concerns is our dispatchers not paging our fire dept. to local vehicle accidents. You as a dispatcher when do you page out a fire dept. to an accident? How bad does the accident have to be?

Sounds like us... we had a PI accident about 6 miles from our station but another dept was paged out...

We get toned out for them all. They may cancel us but the tones still go out.

WE GET TONED FOR EVERY ACCIDENT

fyrfyter122 says ...

I'm a dispatcher, vol. firefighter, and emt in my county. unless it's just a fender bender and they are just wanting a report done we send fire, ems, and law to every wreck.

 We operate the same way.

Our dispatch is great when it comes to MVC or MVA, what ever your area prefers to call it. when in doubt, tap it out. over half the time , we are fire police directing traffic around the situation

At every accident all forms of public safety is dispatched, Police, ems and fire dept. If one unit arrives on scene and they found out there is no need for any of these then they will cancel them. If there is anything on my side of the county, they automatically tone our dept out, because if we have anything on our side of the county, it will take ems 20 minutes to get there. We are usually the first ones on scene.

1401 makes a good point, it is up to us as dispatchers to get the correct info.  In my county all 911 calls come to us first, unless they say no pi and it is a report only the world goes!  We send a ems unit, first responders and fire, also our rescue squad.  All our depts have tools but the squad still goes untill the first fire unit cancels them if they are not needed.  This to is in our p&p manual and our ossi cad is config to reccommend the above.  Also as far as the correct units being sent your chief needs to make sure that the 911 dir has the boundries set up right.