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July 7, 2010 By Russell Nichols
Whenever there's an incident, residents in California's San Ramon Valley want information fast. Richard Price, chief of the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District, knows this because visitors always flood the live dispatch section of the district's website, FireDepartment.org.
"Traffic to our website really spikes," he said. "We know there is interest in what's causing the smoke or where the sirens are coming from. We wanted to take that information and put it in the field."
Now, mobile technology will give residents an on-the-go glimpse into the district's 911 dispatch center. Touted as the first of its kind, the FireDepartment.org iPhone app arrived this week as a tool for users to have real-time access to information about emergencies and disasters in the San Francisco Bay Area community without needing a desktop computer.
"The idea was to have that functionality on a mobile platform where it would be more useful," Price said. "This is a consumer version."
Users can view active incidents and pinpoint locations on an interactive map. They can access a log of recent incidents and a photo gallery of significant events. The app allows for customization as well. For example, users can choose to be notified of incidents by category, or listen to live emergency radio communications using their handheld devices.
The new app gives users access to public information like they've never had it before, Price said. If a resident is stuck in traffic, or sees smoke or hears a fire truck, he or she needs only to tap the app to find out what's going on and where.
The district, Price added, also will use the app to communicate with its Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members and to share pertinent data during disasters.
"That's how we'll be communicating with them when normal command and control avenues aren't available," he said. "It does provide some transparency."
The app was built at a low cost. The district, Price said, brought on students from the College of Informatics at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) for iPhone engineering and programming services. The district's service area encompasses approximately 155 square miles and serves a population of 167,500. Even if you don't live in the San Ramon Valley, Price said, you can still listen to the live actions of dispatchers, firefighters and paramedics.
"In the future we think there will be far more people in the mobile environment than the desktop environment," Price said. "We can push information directly to a phone now."
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Just because technology enables it, and government has a monopoly on the service, does it make it a public's service at the expense of another? Just thinking how a person's house fire across town or another's car jacking, or another's domestic disturbance becomes a subscription service as a public broadcast just because it can. Seems like we're stuck. In an emergency, who do you call? Government, that's who. And now your misfortune becomes public record reported to anyone listening or subscribing. Seems like a Catch-22. For city- county-wide alerts, sounds like a great service. For the poor schmo who needs emergency assistance, seems like an invasion of their privacy. Guess this takes the old police scanner to a new level, now with validation and attribution.
No actually government should be last resort on the list of contacts in an emergency situation and your local state or counties 911 center should be at the top. And as I can probably guess your not in the public service field or else you wouldn't have made a comment such as that. I'm an active provider in ems as a medic and if extra effort can be made to have a trained citizen in a nearby area of an emergent situation reach out and offer assistance when medics aren't close by the scene then that's awesome. An emergency being what it is and time being crucial to the patient's survival, an app like that is needed nation wide in my opinion! Just because you think it's costly, your local fire departments are funded by registrations fees at your DMV, that 3.00 you take out of your wallet comes to our departments to maintain our ambulances and life saving supplies needed to do just that! So if someone else certified in CPR wants to assist in a cardiac arrest and give seconds back to a patient than so be it. CPR has to begin in a very timely manner or else it cuts the survival rate for the patient in half!!! I'm sure if you, lord forbid, were in that position where time isn't a luxury anyone willing to help you, you'd take it. So do some research before making assumptions of a life saving app, because like I said the life it saves could be your own!!!