Life in the emergency zone — North County Dispatch NORTHCOMM

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Brian
Posts: 1454
Joined: Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:54 pm

Life in the emergency zone — North County Dispatch NORTHCOMM

Post by Brian »

Saw this story in the local newspaper today.
Had a neat photo in the newspaper with the dispatch console with about 8
monitor screen. and notice one screen was the CHP CAD :-)
Very nice written article to read about NORTH COMM.
http://www.sdranchcoastnews.com/RSF%20p ... Fhome.html


Life in the emergency zone — RSF-based North County Dispatch continues to grow in various ways
By Whitney Youngs

When conjuring up a behind-the-scenes image of the foremost communication centers for organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration or the Central Intelligence Agency, the theatrical vision that comes to mind is one of computer whizzes working industriously around the clock off a network equipped with state-of-the-art technology as their supervisors stand behind them, bellowing for an update while a studious staffer frantically seeks out an answer to a looming question over the phone.

Save the gripping fictional plot and glittery dramatics of a Hollywood motion picture, that kind of visual portrayal isn’t so implausible at an emergency dispatch center like the one in Rancho Santa Fe. Encounters between a dispatch operator and someone with a real-life emergency can’t get anymore authentic and come with stories that often times lack finality – the cardinal sin for a mainstream, blockbuster thriller movie.
“We tell our staff that there isn’t a lot of closure in our business,” said Charlie Knust, the communications supervisor with the North County Dispatch of the Joint Powers Agency in Rancho Santa Fe. “We don’t always know what happens to the person and that comes with the job. For a lot of people who dispatch: it’s a calling. It’s what we do. We are very proud of it and enjoy doing it.”

The North County Dispatch Center, first conceived by the Joint Powers Agency in the early 1980s, is situated on the second floor inside the headquarters of the RSF Fire Protection District above its administration offices. The entire building is essentially connected to RSF Fire station No. 1 along El Fuego.

Barry Hudson, who has been with the center almost 23 years, said he has seen a lot of changes over the years.

“We had a lot fewer radio channels to implement, and at night, we only had one person on duty,” Hudson said about the old set up once situated in the fire station. “It is a different job now compared to what it was at that time.”

According to Knust, the center’s operations grew out of the fire station that at one point served solely Rancho Santa Fe. The center eventually took on bigger responsibility when a few local cities joined forces to create a dispatch center with a wider range of coverage. In the last five years, the center has acquired responsibility for the cities of Del Mar, Carlsbad and, most recently, Oceanside, which is the center’s busiest locale and constitutes about 25 percent of its calls.
“There are times when it’s quiet, which is the same for any dispatch center. But then it will become busy and stressful, but our staff is trained to deal with that level of stress,” said Knust, who is a former firefighter and paramedic. He joined the center nearly 10 years ago, first as an IT staffer and then a dispatcher. The center actually has its own in-house IT staff. “We recently went through a hiring process and one of the applicants said, ‘We are the first first-responders,’ and I like that term because we are the first contact for anyone who has an emergency. The dispatcher is the person who can calm that person down and give them instruction.”

Set Up

Each dispatch trainee undergoes education in the classroom – about two weeks – and then spends, on average, three to four months of on-the-job training with an experienced staff member.

Four dispatchers are on duty at any 24 hours of the day, while five are on staff between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. – the center’s peak hours – each operating one of eight consoles with the main hub of about five or six consoles all meeting in the middle and their respective chairs positioned in the same manner as those around a dining room table. The dispatchers face each other and communicate freely, both casually in between calls and in reference to the calls themselves, spouting out the numbers of emergency units (a four- to five-digit sequence that identifies an emergency unit by its department, the type it is – i.e. fire engine vs. ambulance – and to what station it belongs). The conversation among dispatchers is inevitably accompanied with a vocabulary of acronyms, codes and jargon.

A dispatcher can electronically adjust the console’s desktop so they have the ability to sit or stand while working. Also built into the stations are fans and lights and a two-tiered structure suspending a series of flat-screen computer monitors that display the various components used for the dispatcher’s operations: the list of calls and their status, radio frequencies, a map of the region, the digital report of a call and access to the Internet. Much of the operation is mouse based while every phone number – to water districts, police departments, the patrol and even the Palomar Airport tower – seems to be on speed dial while the capability to connect to agencies such as the California Highway Patrol and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department are instantaneous.

The center handles medical and fire emergencies for essentially all of San Diego’s North County – with the exception of Escondido and Camp Pendleton – and receives its calls from the two aforementioned groups, along with other law enforcement agencies that first field the 9-1-1 calls. Aside from the hum of human voices, the office is filled with a variation of sounds: ringing telephone lines, a recurring computer-generated tone when a call is entered into the system – a chime ring similar to a new e-mail alert – and the communication over the radio frequencies.

Although down four full-time vacancies – shifts covered by part-time personnel – the center currently employs Knust, who overseas both the dispatch and IT staff, his supervisor, Denny Neville, who is the center’s administrator, 14 full-time and five part-time dispatchers, a staff assistant and three IT employees, two of whom are trained dispatchers. The center receives calls for the cities of Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Vista and San Marcos, the communities of Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove, the RSF Patrol and the North County and RSF Fire Protection districts. The latter district serves the communities of Bonsall, Fallbrook and Rainbow.

New developments

When Oceanside joined the center in January it brought a new system – laptops called Mobile Data Computers installed in fire engines – so that dispatchers are able to watch in live time the movement of the department’s fire units in the region on one of their computer screens. Other cities are expected to receive the same type of technology in the near future through grant funding.

“Working with Oceanside and the city of Vista, we are able to put together a grant to fund the backbone of the system (servers at our center),” said Knust. “Once in place [within other departments] the call information that they [firefighters] receive now will immediately pop up on the screen and with a push of a button, will show them on the map where [the call] is and a route of how to get there. We will know where everyone is down to 30 feet, and we will be able to pick the closest unit based on where they physically are at that moment.”

When a call is directed to the center, the sound of a phone rings in the room and the call pops up on the screen on one of more than 20 lines – the first six, which are dedicated to 9-1-1, the next eight are 10-digit numbers also used for fire and medical emergencies, and the remaining lines are business numbers for the RSF Patrol and the RSF Fire District.

A day in the life

On one recent Thursday, dispatcher Olivia Powell sat at her station as the first in command to answer the incoming calls (dispatchers rotate their responsibilities during the day to allow for breaks and shift changes). A call came in by way of the Carlsbad Police Department and Powell answered, “This is the fire department,” and without skipping a beat began to verify the city and address where the emergency occurred, she then inquired about the nature of the emergency by asking in a calm voice, “What’s going on there?” She followed up by confirming the telephone number and asking for the R.P.’s (Reporting Party) name.

“A lot of people want to tell us everything that’s going on, describe the problem, but until we know where you are we can’t get anyone started that way,” said Knust. “We also want get your call-back information, people say, ‘Why do you want my phone number? Just get here.’ The problem is, if you hang up or if we need to talk to you further, we need to get back to you. In some cases we want to stay on the phone until we find you if you’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
With the address in place, the system will, as the dispatchers say, “populate” a box with the name of a business, a public building, library, school, etc., if applicable.

“Take, for instance, the Rancho Santa Fe Garden Club, people might not know the address off the top of their head but probably know where it is located,” said Hudson, who was there overseeing the four other dispatchers on duty. “It’s easier to drive to something you can visualize instead of trying to find the address – you can just picture it and it’s going to save everyone involved a lot more time.”

The computer will alert the dispatcher if the address is invalid and, if so, the system will query for possible recommendations. Once the address is verified, the computer automatically lists the nearest cross streets and what entity has jurisdiction over the incident. The center, however, doesn’t believe in boundaries as cities helping cities saves a lot of time.

“If we had to honor the boundaries, this job would be difficult at times,” said Hudson.

Once Powell, who wears a headset as required, answers the call from a keypad on her desk, the telephone number, address and city appears on one of her screens – when calling from a landline – through a system called the A.L.I.
(Automatic Location Indicator). She then pushes a button with her mouse called “Initial Assign” that dispatches the call, all done in a matter of about 15 seconds. Powell will then add notes to the call – age, symptoms if it’s a medical call, or if a fire, perhaps a brief description of it and whether they know if everyone is out of the building.

Available emergency units are automatically selected based on how close they are according to time. The colorful computer monitors delineate segments of the region, but also the status of a call and a particular unit with glowing and varying shades of the rainbow. Each call is placed in a queue and is colored coded based on its status such as “responding,” “at scene,” “departing scene” and “at hospital.” The response time is logged, and once the unit arrives the clock is reset. If a unit is late, the computer alerts the dispatcher who can confirm a unit’s E.T.A. (Estimated Time of Arrival) over the radio. (The center had logged one call in the queue for a commercial fire in Oceanside spanning 15 hours and counting that began the night prior). One monitor is dedicated entirely to radio frequencies categorized by what Knust calls talk groups – channels dedicated for instances of ongoing medical aid, traffic collisions, makeshift fire commands, the RSF Patrol and ancillary channels such as police helicopters and air ambulances.

On the recent Thursday afternoon, Powell received three consecutive calls in minutes from people reporting an apartment fire in Bonsall. The first report came from a man, who seemed out of breath, and told her he lived nearby and didn’t know the exact address of the apartment. He yelled to a person in the background for it and eventually recited it back to Powell who then asked, “Can you tell me if everyone is out of the building?” The next two calls seemed to come from people closer to the second-story blaze, and Powell followed up with “Do not go back inside the house” and “Help is on the way.” (Powell, who started last July, works part-time, while finishing up at Cal State Fullerton as a public administration major. She has plans to become a full-time- time employee once she graduates in May. Her mother is a dispatcher for Oceanside Police Department).

Each call is a collaborative effort and while one dispatcher answers the call, another gets on the radio and announces it. Once the call is “toned out”– which means the fire department has received the alarm at the station –another dispatcher may communicate with units at the scene. As in the case of the fire, Hudson spoke on behalf of the center named North Com (Command) directly to what is called the “Incident Command” – another jargon term that indicates the first fire engine on hand is setting up a command, and is responsible for the happenings until the chief arrives.

Each dispatcher is able to listen in on the radio frequencies. Powell did so between the firefighters, one from inside the apartment, describing the interior, his voice interposed by the sounds of his breathing mask reminiscent to the speech patterns of Star Wars’ Darth Vader.

Upon arrival, the chief is responsible for the incident and, in the case of the Bonsall apartment fire, Hudson asked him over the radio if he would like the center to “…proceed with ‘move-ups’” to which his response: “affirmative.” A “move-up” means that the center coordinates the reposition of engines from nearby areas to cover stations without an engine due to being called away on an emergency.

“There are a lot of responsibilities going on that aren’t visible from the surface,” said Hudson.

In between the “move-up” process, a few media outlets call with questions about the fire – one even on an emergency line – that most likely heard about it from the radio traffic. The busiest time for the center is usually during evening rush hour peak traffic times – between 5 and 6 p.m. — and when a collision is reported on the freeway two fire engines are sent from opposing directions in case the reporting party inaccurately places the accident on the wrong side of the interstate.

“All the response plans are all predetermined. We don’t make the decision, the computer will select it, and it’s a system designed by a group of chiefs,” said Hudson. “For a medical you’re always going to get a [fire] engine and an ambulance; for a structure fire you’re always going to get three engines, a truck, a chief and an ambulance. Sometimes people will ask us to change it – they’ll say they don’t need the engine, but we don’t make that decision and, in Rancho Santa Fe, when a person gets that engine there is always going to be a paramedic on that engine. So, that kind of life support will be there immediately.”

The Calls

In the case of a medical emergency, once the initial information is confirmed and the call is assigned, the dispatcher will get a read of the patient’s symptoms and add it to the call log. Powell received a call of an elderly woman having chest pains, and clicked on the button on her computer that read, “Chest Pain.” It immediately categorized the call medical. Once it was assigned, Powell moved through a predetermined set of instructions based on the P.T.’s (patient) symptoms, which are outlined in a three-ring binder called the E.M.D. (Emergency Medical Dispatcher). Each dispatcher is E.M.D. certified and nearly always begins with the question” “Is the patient conscious and breathing?” If need be, the dispatcher is trained to instruct the caller on how to administer CPR or the Heimlich maneuver, but all dispatchers dread the calls, especially those who have never been through the experience.

“My first [CPR call] was a 48-year-old father, who was around the same age as my dad, and his daughter was calling, so that was a really hard one,”

remembered Powell. “These emergencies, in some cases, can be the worst day of someone’s life, and so it’s a very private thing to be a part of and so, for me, it’s really a privilege to help these people.”

Just like one’s first CPR call, there are those heart-wrenching calls that stick with a dispatcher as though they happened yesterday. For Hudson, that kind of call occurred about a year and a half ago on a Sunday when baby, who fell into pond at a birthday party, drowned.

“You can usually tell the intensity right when you pick up the call because you can hear people screaming. There was so much commotion going on,” said Hudson, who said only two of three calls out of every 10 where CPR is needed have someone at the scene who knows how to perform it. “I wish it was required for parents expecting their first child. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but there is always that chance.”

In general, the dispatcher is expected to gather all of the information needed from the R.P. in 60 seconds or less, except for those situations that demand their presence until emergency services arrive at the scene.

One such emergency in which Hudson remained on the line longer than usual was when someone called and only knew how to speak Russian. In such a case, the center is able to track down a translator for basically any language in mere seconds, and the connection is completed through a three-way calling method with the click of the mouse key without putting anyone on hold.

The center’s map system is based on Thomas Brothers, but also mapping research provided by each community or city updated by an official with each fire department. The maps list residential lots by address, names of schools, commercial strip malls, and even the locations of golf course holes. The maps are on the computers and in the form of hard copies.

“The first thing I train my people to do is always verify the city because streets like El Camino Real run from San Diego to Oceanside,” added Hudson.

So much of center’s operations rely heavily on its computers and if a portion of the system were ever to crash, the dispatchers would have to work manually. If the entire system went down, the center’s operations would shift over to Heartland Fire Communications – a dispatch center in El Cajon. The scenario recently occurred in which Heartland’s system crashed and the North County Dispatch fielded all its calls for 45 minutes to an hour.

“It doesn’t happen that often – it was the only time in all my years that I have been doing this that it is has happened – but it does occur,” said Hudson.
If you have an emergency, call 9-1-1.
31
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2004 8:13 pm

Back up dispatch

Post by 31 »

Gee will (HFD) ever get dual redundancy ? it seems there down more than there up and whats this station alerting via internet it should be wireless.
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