Responding Personnel

There are two critical pieces of information that make up an agencies "resource pool" during an emergency. One is responding data and the other is on-duty data. These two data points are important because, other than mutual aid resources, they equal the total of your agencies manpower resources during an incident. Responding data consists of those members that are responding to an incident and to what location, such as to what station/team or if directly to the incident. Here's how it works.

Each of your agencies stations and/or teams will be assigned a toll-free number. Members will program these numbers into their phone's speed dial.

Using your agencies existing dispatch system, members are notified of an incident. If the member is able to respond, he or she will press one button on his or her speed dial. The call lasts about 5 seconds and automatically disconnects, allowing the volunteer to focus on safely traveling to the station or incident.

At the Station

In your station's bay, a display monitor will show each responding member's response data immediately after the member has registered a response.

Commanders, career personnel, and first arriving members will preview the response data to determine when to go en route with emergency apparatus and what apparatus to leave behind for those that will be arriving. In addition, they can determine if sufficient resources are responding and whether additional manpower should be requested, either from another station or from mutual aid agencies.

Depending on the incident, it can be valuable to know what another station or team's responding resources are. Each station or team can easily view another station or team's responding data by simply clicking on the station or team. Alternatively, it is possible to view "All Tabs" and see all the station or teams' resources in one compiled list..

In the Field

Mobile data terminals (MDTs) with broadband cards can be used in emergency and command apparatus to provide real-time member responding data in the field.

Tablets such as the Apple iPad or Motorola Zoom can also be used to display the FFRS application. (See Mobile Web App for smartphone application)

Those in the field can preview the response data to determine if sufficient resources are responding and whether additional manpower should be requested.