Incident Response Poll

I thought I would provide some more clarity regarding the incident response poll I sent out by email yesterday. First off, we are not trying to stop the volunteer firefighters from attending, rather we are trying to eliminate the more mundane types of calls from your rather busy lives. If this goes ahead it would mean that the less serious medical calls, simple clean ups and burning complaints would not be paged out during regular work hours as the day staff would be able to handle these on their own. Not to say if a volunteer were in the station, they couldn't go - in fact I would encourage them to attend if they so choose. For any serious type call including MVIs, alarm bells, structure fires, brush fires, cardiac arrest etc an all call page will go out at ALL TIMES. If we are short on day staff due to a training course, holidays or sick days, an ALL PAGE will go out. If we find at the call or en route to the call additional information that more help will be needed, another page out will be initiated. If a second call comes in at the same time, another page will go out. So I ask you to think carefully and consider what I have mentioned above. If you would like to change your mind on what you have already sent me on the poll, please send another email. As I indicated, it will be a simple majority rule on how this is handled. It appears that there are people with strong feelings for either way of handling this, so I will let you decide what is best.

I will emphasize however that this is an emergency response business. We will dispatch to calls in the most effective and timely manner that is possible. When an apparatus has a suitably equipped and trained crew for the incident it will leave the station as soon as possible. If additional apparatus can be staffed and are required, then they will also respond. Remember, we are here to serve the customer (the person that calls 911).

By the way, the poll currently sits at 9 for changing to page out only when required and 6 have replied to maintain the current system and page out for everything.