| | Published March 13th, 2013
| What Time IS It, Anyway?
| | By Nick Marnell | | |
Both the Board of Supervisors and the Moraga-Orinda Fire District Board of Directors met after press deadline this week to discuss the proposed fire station merger. Check our website for updates, www.lamorindaweekly.com.
Sprinkled throughout the continuing coverage of this issue are discussions of reduced response times, comments on increased travel times, concerns of increased response times - along with refutations of each of those issues. An explanation of this firefighting jargon seems to be in order.
Moraga-Orinda Fire District Division Chief Stephen Healy supplied the technical information in the following fictional example, which attempts to clarify the time references:
A man experiences heart attack symptoms at his home in Orinda. His wife calls 911 from her cell phone. Her call routes to the Golden Gate Division of the California Highway Patrol, in Vallejo. The instant that she gives the pertinent information to the call taker, the call is forwarded to the Contra Costa Fire Protection District Dispatch Center in Pleasant Hill.
ConFire's dispatcher verifies the victim's address, determines the situation, and the computer picks the closest fire engine and MOFD ambulance to handle the emergency. Depending on how efficiently the caller relays the information to the CHP call center, the process takes from eight to 38 seconds. This period - from the report of the incident to the receipt of the call by the responding MOFD unit from the communications center - is the dispatch processing time.
At the fire station, lights turn on, bells ring, and a printer kicks out the emergency information; the crew storms into action. The fire engine is turned on, and the crew dons the proper equipment to handle the crisis. The quickest outfit change is for an EMS call, like this heart attack emergency; it takes the longest time for the crew to gear up for a wildfire response. Thus, the crew's reaction may take from 30 seconds to two minutes. This period - from the moment the unit receives the dispatch, until the MOFD crew leaves the fire station - is the turnout time.
Next comes the segment over which the responding unit has the least control: from when it leaves the station until it arrives at the incident scene. Since this victim lives in a home along a level highway, in an easily accessible location, the crew will arrive a lot quicker than had he lived on one of the hilly, winding streets of Orinda. The crew is also at the mercy of the weather, a sudden road outage, a traffic accident. The time that it takes the MOFD responding unit to drive from the fire station and arrive at the scene is the travel time.
Fifteen seconds of dispatch processing time, plus 45 seconds of turnout time, plus three minutes of travel time, equals four minutes. This four-minute time frame, from the wife's report of the possible heart attack until the MOFD crew arrives at the victim's home, is the response time.
As coverage of the possible Lamorinda fire station merger escalates, keep the following equation in mind:
Response time = dispatch processing time + turnout time + travel time
It may be helpful in following the sometimes arcane discussions.
MOFD recommends dialing 911 in any emergency situation, whether the call is made from a land line or a cell phone.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA