By US Digital Designs Staff

Today’s mobile technology—smartphones, tablets and “phablets”—can you let you do almost anything. You can check stock prices, get instant news alerts, and post videos and status updates on social media. And, firefighters and first responders can even get mobile alerts when there’s an incident or emergency.

Yes, fire station alerting is going mobile. Customers of the US Digital Designs’ Phoenix G2 Fire Station Alerting System can now get critical and live-incident fire station alerting information—both at the station and on their mobile devices—to help reduce response times.

Fire Station Alerting Mobile Technology is Evolving
Many fire department “old-timers” will entertain some of their newer crew members with stories from long ago. They may talk about how firefighters had no modern computer systems for getting emergency alerts from their dispatch centers and how they relied on alerts from only via two-way handheld radios. Even worse, departments in rural areas often had to rely on dialup phones to first responders’ homes. That situation made getting alerts via handheld radios seem high-tech. Radios and computerized/IP fire station alerting is still very much a critical way to notify responders of an incident, but it’s time that departments get up to speed and make use of current technology.

As we all know, verbal communication is much slower than written communication and is subject to user error by first responders who are responsible for taking the information communicated via handheld radio and passing it on to others based on their recollection. Combined with modern dispatch and alert systems like the Phoenix G2 Fire Station Alerting System, smartphone and tablet technology applications can now provide instant verbal, written, and location alerts to multiple users, regardless of whether they are in the firehouse or on the road.

Fire Station Alerting Mobile Application Features
At US Digital Designs, we’ve stayed ahead of the curve in monitoring technology advancements and the impact they have on our industry. At present, although it seems as if anyone can put together an app and sell it via the Apple or Google online stores, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Many organizations want to be the first to market a unique idea and, as a result, have offered an inferior product.

We’ve given the concept of a mobile technology a lot of research and development over the last few years, to try and determine which features should/should not be included in such a product offering. We’ve also researched how to develop the back-end infrastructure so that it’s just as dependable as our in-quarters Phoenix G2 Fire Station Alerting System—no matter what country or state it’s being used in. After a thoughtful analysis, we worked with our clients to prioritize what they felt should be the primary functionality of any mobile offering:

• The ability to receive simultaneous mobile alerts. Life is unpredictable and, more often than not, a first responder might have multiple incidents in which he is involved. An application that provides for concurrent alerts is critical.
• Hearing the same tones as the station. In addition to visual alerts, the mobile application should also allow users to hear information, including tones, so t

By Carl J. Haddon

In my rural Fire District, we have exactly one hydrant (dry) in a 240-square-mile response area. During the majority of the year, that doesn’t pose a terrible challenge as we are blessed with many ponds, streams, creeks, and the mighty Salmon River to draft water from. Our frozen winters create a whole new ball game as our water sources all freeze over, or freeze to the point where accessing the water in them is beyond hazardous to firefighters and apparatus alike.

Tenders and tankers help, but we all know that these fire apparatus are also limited in their effectiveness by their ability to access water to refill. Also creating a potential challenge is the determination of how badly given fire apparatus leak. (I know—fire engines don’t leak) By the way, if your department has one or more of those trucks that don’t leak but somehow flow water onto the ground when they’re not supposed to, now is the time of year to do what you can to stem those flows.

I’ve heard a number of rural departments considering turning to compressed-air foam systems (CAFS) to help stretch their water. I’m not expressly opposed to CAFS or the use of foam, however, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 11, Standard for Low-, Medium-, and High-Expansion Foam, tells us that foam is not suggested or recommended for use on three-dimensional fires, or on things like flowing fuel fires. If you’re going “by the book” and trying to follow NFPA standards, foams are then relegated to horizontal flat-surfaced fires, like airport runways. Foam certainly has its place, but remember what its capabilities are. For those on tighter budgets, also remember that once a jug of protein based foam is opened, it’s shot. My department also has a CAFS, but we’ve found it doesn’t get used enough to retain proficiency, and the time it takes for the volunteers to get it spun up for use is excessive.

While doing research for an article for my other column “To the Rescue,” I learned about rural fire departments batch mixing an encapsulator agent into their apparatus’ tanks and having enormous success with virtually instant knockdown and incredible burn back (rekindle) resistance. These departments tell me that using an encapsulator agent is like having “additional resources and manpower” in a five gallon jug. With this info in mind, I started doing a bit more research. I have used an encapsulator agent since the late 1990s, but my application was almost exclusively confined to major motorsport and super-speedway racing events.

What I learned about today’s encapsulator agents surprised me. Encapsulator agents are not Class A or Class B foam. They are not foam at all. Although listed in NFPA 18A, Standard on Water Additives for Fire Control and Vapor Mitigation, in the class of wetting agent, there is verbiage and specific criteria and field tests within the standard that separate encapsulator agents from wetting agents and foams. Albeit really interesting, there isn’t enough room in this column to explain the science and chemistry that explains how encapsulator agents work. I can tell you that fire department apparatus in Germany and throughout other parts of Europe have been required to use encapsulator agent for some time now and do so with fantastic success. I will follow this article up