Fire Service Using Technology

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The Barbados Fire Service is using today’s technology to share its business with the public.

“I know that we are the pioneers because none of the other emergency personnel so far have broadened their horizons in this area,” revealed fire officer, Glyne Alleyne, while explained they were using social network sites such as Facebook to enhance contact with Barbadians.

“We are leading the pack, having created a network and all of these avenues have allowed us to share what we do with the public.”

“Each station is fully linked to headquarters via network and right now we are looking at the possibility of having mobile terminals on board our appliances, enabling our personnel to get floor plans for buildings on scene and allowing for geo-mapping”, Alleyne added.

He noted that one meeting and informal discussions had been held so far regarding having an Automatic Vehicle Location and GPS tracking for fire officers deployed. “Barbados is a small country, but still we are trying to establish the nearest tender to an emergency and this will efficiently be done via GPS which allows us to determine which is the nearest truck that we can divert to an incident.”

The fire department also intends to make full use of multimedia and Internet streaming to educate and interact with the public.

“Only last year I had a number of discussions with my colleague ... from the Fire Prevention Unit, and we planned this year to create a number of video clips which can be put on our Ustream channel where the public can go and watch these clips,” Alleyne added.

“The general categories that we looked at are kitchen safety, electronics and appliance safety, and the problem of nuisance calls to the fire service to name a few. I expect that very soon ... we will start the process of video recording some dramatisations and actual informative clips we can put there for the public to watch”, he continued.

“As far as future plans go, we are currently working along with Motorola to improve accountability on the fire ground; this will come via our communications infrastructure.”

Source: www.barbadostoday.bb

Comments

Linda said…
Great idea to use social networking! I will post about this tomorrow.
February 4, 2010 at 7:15 PM
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