Emergencies: First wave of new equipment is now up and running
By Andrew Wellner
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
Copyright 2007 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
PALMER, Alaska — In five years, medics responding to calls in the Valley could have digital maps in their ambulances. Dispatchers could track their progress to the scene through radio transmitters. On scene, they might record patient history and symptoms with a touch-screen tablet computer. Firefighters could call up building plans in their trucks.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough emergency services director Dennis Brodigan said his department is looking at all of those things and the grant money to pay for them. None will arrive sooner than two years from now.
But one large element is already in place. On Monday Brodigan led a tour of the first step into the digital future for emergency services — computer-aided dispatching at the Palmer dispatch center.
Since the first of the month, dispatchers have been using computers to take reports previously taken by hand. They have a new mapping system kept current through the borough map service.
Karen Ripley, head of the dispatch center, said the dispatch center is usually staffed with four people during the day. They dispatch all borough fire equipment and ambulances as well as the Palmer Police department. Wasilla and Houston police, as well as Alaska State Troopers, are dispatched out of the MatCom dispatch center in Wasilla, which installed a similar system a year ago.
Ripley said that with all the things the system places at dispatchers’ fingertips, it was tough at first to trust the data they were getting. Brodigan said that kind of trust would build over time.
Dispatchers previously relied on a directions service provided by the phone companies. They found that in areas with high growth, the system provided wrong directions, Brodigan said.
“It used to be the third house on the right; now it’s the 19th house on the right,” Brodigan said.
Since the new system is tied into the borough’s own maps, the only time it will miss a house is when someone doesn’t go through the platting process and erects an illegal building.
“That doesn’t happen very often anymore,” Brodigan said.
On Monday Ripley had a moment of trouble flipping back and forth between windows on her screen but straightened it out quickly.
Even given the learning curve, the system immediately started to save time for her department, she said. And she doesn’t miss the hand-written cards a bit.
Across the room, one of her dispatchers was sorting through a long file containing probably six months’ worth of cards. Large calls had multiple cards stapled together.
Brodigan said a fire two weeks ago on Knik-Goose Bay Road, which saw several tankers called out only to have their equipment freeze, took 11 cards to report fully.
Nobody can prove it, but they think they set a record for the number of cards in one incident, Brodigan said.
Though having computers do the reporting automatically saves time during calls, it’s on the tail-end, when the borough or Palmer police need information from the cards to produce statistics on call volume or accident frequency, where the most time will be saved.
Where the paper system required hundreds of man-hours to complete such a task, the computer system, once it collects enough data, will be able to do the same job in seconds, Brodigan said.
But the system isn’t perfect. Borough spokeswoman Patty Sullivan asked Ripley to call up her address on the mapping system.
The map quickly popped up, but the dot marking Sullivan’s house was in the middle of the street.
“Why do you live in the cul de sac?” Brodigan joked.