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Alright...riddle me this...

Eastside Fire will commonly clear from a call using 'available local area', 'in quarters', or one other I can't remember now... :oops:

What do these refer to?

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Nothing fancy. When a policeman clears a call, he returns to patrol, but fire units mostly have to wait around for the next one. So the "available xxxx" refers to the unit going back on the "available" list for the next call-out, and their general location.
Maybe they're already back in quarters (station), or enroute to quarters (driving back), or in the local area doing something (groceries, video store...), or even "on location" (we're hanging around at the scene, cleaning up or whatever).

You will here their units clear calls by saying "available in quarters" even though they are just leaving the scene. They do this to help keep there response times acceptable, its a way to sway the data in their favor.

As an example: unit A responds to a call 10 minutes from their station, they arrive and then go available in quarters. If while returning to quarters (still 5 minutes away from the station) they get dispatched to another call, they respond right away because they are already out on the street returning to quarters but the record will show they responded from quarters and with a very fast response time.

All they are accomplishing is showing better response times to the public, insurance companies and such when in fact they are cheating the system to look better.

Wow...

Cheating the system? This seems kind of harsh.... Do they really use dispatch logs for things like Insurance? I mean it would seem like somebody is asking for a lot of trouble if this is true....

I have also heard them clear themselfs in quarters when I knew they really were still on scene but somehow I always thought they did that because thats where they were going and no need to tie up the airwaves with several calls like Avaliable local area then in quarters...

Is there anybody in our group here with eastside fire or have some first hand knowledge of this sort of thing that could shed some light on Sgt. Bilko's comments?

I am not a member of Eastside F&R but of a neighboring district. We do not use "available in quarters" to get "better response times." We, the fire services, will say available in quarters if that is were we are heading are are generally close. We do this to tie up less airtime with saying available local area and then 2 minutes later saying in quarters. We definitely don't do this to keep response times acceptable as Sgt Bilko states. Why would we cheat to show better response times? We get there as fast as we possibly can everytime.

Brian

Ok - to set that particular phrase straight:

In a nutshell - the firefighters say that so that the dispatcher can place the unit in the correct status for future call recommendations. It tells the computer that the aid car/engine/whatever is now back in it's first response area, and can now respond per the "response plan" for that area.

Eastside Communications (the agency that dispatches Eastside Fire and Rescue, along with just about all the Fire Dept's over here) uses a complicated Computer Aided Dispatch program that was created by a company called "TriTech". This CAD system does not use "runcards" - it uses "Response Plans".

When generating a response to an incident, this CAD system does not necessarily look for the closest fire station. It looks for a resource that has the quickest response time to the scene based on it's computations of road travel distance.

Part of this computation will be the actual location of an apparatus at that moment. This was planned for use with Automatic Vehicle Location systems - but, that part of the system is not on line yet.

Right now (without the AVL system), when a fire unit goes "in service", the CAD system remembers it's last location - be it a fire scene, collision scene, or hospital. The CAD system will use that previous location for computing future responses - unless that fire unit tells the dispatcher that the are "not in their local area". In most cases, this isn't a problem, because most fire units are responding within their first-response area, and when they go in service they are usually either within or very close to their "local area".

The problem comes up when they are not near their "local area". For now, they may wait to put themselves back in service until they are back in their "local area". Or, They may put themselves in service "with a 10 minute delay" (to give them some time to get back to their area). That simply tells the dispatcher to tell CAD to add 10 minutes to that unit's normal response time. In that way, CAD may overlook the normal "first in" unit in favor of a unit that can respond quicker than the 10 minute delay specified.

When AVL is activated later this year, the computer will actually determine a call response based on the current location of an apparatus. So, if Bellevue Engine 8 (which is normally stationed in the Cougar Mountain area) just happens to be up near the Bellevue Training Center for whatever reason, and a fire response comes in nearby, then Engine 8 will be the recommended unit - because they are physically the closest apparatus to the incident (not the normal first in station).


Hopefully, that made some sense - it does get more complicated than that....

Brad

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Whatever.....

Thanks for the answer Brad. I still like the conspiracy thread though. Maybe we can apply it to something else.

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