Fire Service Communications in Tasmania
by Lochie Brown
| Lochie Brown is a Communications Officer with the Tasmania Fire Service. He is a Graduate of the Institution of Fire Engineers (UK) and holds an Associate Diploma in Fire Technology. His fire service background includes ten years as a part paid firefighter and three years as a communications officer, specializing in training. He is currently developing a competency-based training package for fire service communications staff in Tasmania. |
| Related Articles: Victoria Police New Zealand Police New South Wales Fire |
| Photographs: (select thumbnail to view detail image) |
State Fire Headquarters Building in Hobart. The Communications Centre is located on the top floor, with plenty of windows overlooking downtown. TFS |
The main Communications Control room of FIRECOM, Comms Officer Jodie-Lynne Breadmore in the foreground. TFS |
This article can be found on
page 48 of the July/August 1998
issue of 9-1-1 Magazine.
Tasmania is the smallest state of Australia, occupying an island located south of Australia's southeastern corner, with a population of around 1/2 million. The state covers 68,049 square kilometers (42,190 sq miles) and has a predominantly mountainous topography. Fire protection in Tasmania is provided primarily by the Tasmania Fire Service (TFS); however a number of other agencies also have fire protection roles within specified areas. These include: Forestry (responsible for State Forests), Parks and Wildlife (responsible for State and National Parks), and Civil Aviation (a federal body primarily responsible for the major airports).
The TFS is made up of 230 fire brigades: 4 of these are currently staffed by full-time paid staff (permanent), 30 are staffed by part paid personnel, with the remainder being staffed by volunteers. Paid staff are located in Tasmania's 4 main urban centers (Hobart, Launceston, Burnie and Devonport) while part paid staff look after the majority of Tasmania's smaller urban centers.
The state is divided into three operational regions, which were originally managed by five dispatch centers. Three of these - Burnie, Launceston and Hobart - were staffed 24 hours a day; the remaining two, located also in Launceston and Hobart, were staffed during normal office hours and primarily looked after the rural volunteer brigades.
Tasmania is unique among Australian Fire Services in that it is the only state to have a single unified fire service. This uniqueness is further enhanced as it is the first state to have a centralized communications and dispatch facility. This was born as a result of a need to increase efficiency and maximize the use of resources and the need to upgrade facilities. A decision was made in the early 1990's to move towards a centralized communication center which had the ability to receive calls, monitor alarms, and dispatch resources.
It was decided that the new center would be located in Hobart due to its higher incident load and closeness to senior officers. The new facility, called FIRECOMM, would form part of the proposed Fire Service State Headquarters that was to be constructed adjacent to the Hobart Fire Brigade complex. The biggest task to be overcome was the obtaining of suitable equipment to meet the needs of a statewide center.
The demands of the TFS were met by two suppliers: Marcom Watson Ltd., a local company which supplied the AWA radio and telephone interface system, and the Country Fire Authority of Victoria, which supplied the computerized operational management system. The radio system used by the center is a touch-screen dispatch console with a variety of line key fields. From a single screen the operator can monitor 6 emergency phone lines, 21 radio channels, 6 standard telephone lines and 16 direct telephone lines to support agencies.
The system also has an integrated station alarm system that is linked to each of Tasmania's staffed stations as well as a 5-tone paging function. The system includes the ability to conference radio and telephone calls and can allow senior officers to monitor any radio channel through remote handsets located in their offices. The remainder of the center's functions are performed with the Fire & Incident Response Management (FIRM) system. FIRM, a Windows-based program, is a multifunction Incident Information System that contains a number of interlinked databases. Through FIRM, operators have access to information on alarmed premises, brigade resources, Chemdata hazmat information, streets and landmarks and personnel details. FIRM is also equipped with an alphanumeric paging function and a Remote Automatic Weather Sensing (RAWS) program that is linked directly to the Bureau of Meteorology, allowing real time weather conditions to be accessed at any time.
On receiving an emergency call either via 0-0-0 or via a DBA telephone system, the operator will enter the details of the call on an incident entry screen and verify the location. The system automatically identifies which Brigade is responsible for the area (as well as the nearest back-up brigade). The operator then dispatches the brigade by simply clicking on the page icon; the information is paged to that brigade.
`Time of call' to `dispatch time' is in the vicinity of 40 to 60 seconds for those brigades with alphanumeric paging (accepted call handling time for PSAPs in Australia is 105 seconds from time of call to dispatch; with the new technology FIRECOMM is achieving an average of 55 seconds). With this system, direct brigade alarms can have the dispatch message sent out in as little as 10 seconds from the time the alarm is received because call information is being generated automatically from the alarmed premise data base.
When brigades respond to the call, their appliance ID is logged onto the incident and this resource is then removed from the available resources database until it returns to the station. While a large proportion of brigades now have the alphanumeric paging system, there a still a number of brigades using the 5-tone paging system and the Telephone Fire Reporting System.
Due to the topography of Tasmania, radio communications can at times be near to impossible in some areas at the best of times. To overcome this the Service is now in the process of upgrading its entire communications system. This has also involved the upgrading of all appliance and hand-held radio equipment.
FIRECOMM, as a statewide communications center, is now two years old. It operates on a 24 hour basis and is staffed by a total of 12 operators, 8 of whom work on a 10-14 hour rotational shift basis whilst the remainder cover the additional daytime workload and holiday periods. The center handles approximately 10,000 incidents per year; these being primarily fire related as the TFS does not perform any EMS or road accident rescue roles. The center also monitors some 1500 alarmed premises throughout the State.
Dispatchers in Tasmania are specialist-trained communications officers and receive little or no training in the operational side of firefighting. However, in saying this, about 50% of the staff have backgrounds as volunteer or part paid firefighters within their local communities and as a result some dispatchers are fully trained in ICS and fireground operations.
Training is now the next major step forward. In the past, dispatchers received initial employment training with minimal continued training throughout their service, and this training was neither formal nor recorded. Today we are moving towards a competency-based training program that will provide a formal training process for a dispatcher's entire career.
