Customer Success Stories

We are proud of our customers and their success stories. When we run across an anecdote about how FIREHOUSE Software is used by a customer, we will include it here (with permission).

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Washington Township Interview by Fire Chief Magazine

Cedar Park TX. publishes article in Texas Fire Chief Magazine

Keller to Use Computers to Make Firefighting More Efficient

by Donna Logan Wilson, The Dallas Morning News

Laptops Will Go on the Scene to Provide Fast Information

KELLER - Keller firefighters have begun honing a new tool that they hope will better prepare them for the variables that threaten their lives when fighting a fire.

Between calls, a group of firefighters has begun building a database and searching for bugs in a new fire management computer system.

The department has invested about $19,000 in five high-speed, high-resolution laptop computers and "Firehouse" software from Visionary Systems Ltd. They expect to have the system loaded and in use within two months. The computers will be mounted in three fire trucks and the two department chiefs' vehicles.

"At our fingertips we will have information when we go up to a building," explained Division Chief Chuck Blankenship. "It's to make us more efficient and more effective in the field."

Laptop computers will replace the bulky black binders that firefighters now use on the scene of a fire or other incident. They will provide more accurate and greater amounts of information on all businesses, schools and other public buildings in Keller.

Firefighters are stocking the system with detailed floor plans of the city's buildings, including data on what type of business it is, the occupancy, construction type, evacuation plans, points for gas and electrical shutoffs, as well as the location and type of any hazardous materials.

It can even tell firefighters how many gallons of water will be needed at a particular location if the fire is at its maximum point.

The scope of the program is broad. Street maps with hydrant locations and color codes for water capacity will be available. The system will integrate business information with inspection records and provide daily reminders on which buildings are up for a review. Firefighters will be able to update information from the scene of an emergency.

A number of administrative and tracking capabilities are being explored, including storing patient and incident reports, personnel files, equipment inventories and training records.

Firefighter Ron Wilson has put in about 300 hours drawing floor plans. He has about 75 of Keller's 280 businesses in the system. Loading data into the system has been time-consuming, but fire officials think the result will be worth it.

"When it comes to completion, it's going to save a lot of time," Mr. Wilson said.

Chief Blankenship said the new program also will be invaluable in planning budgets and tracking vehicle and equipment maintenance.

"It's multifaceted. It's going to help the whole operation," he said. "Based on the number of inquiries that I get from the firefighters, I'd say they're pretty excited" about the new system."

It will also help departments from other cities when they are called in to assist. All departments have mutual-aid plans with other cities that they enact during large-scale emergencies.

With the aid of the new system, firefighters who are unfamiliar with the city and its buildings can look at a floor plan and have a better idea of what to expect once inside.

"When their officers come in, I can pull up a drawing," Chief Blankenship said. "They're not going in blind."

Euless and Grapevine fire departments also are in the process of implementing "Firehouse" software into their daily routine. They give it high marks.

"I think it's one of the best programs that's come along for fire service," said Division Chief Chuck Jones with the Grapevine Fire Department, which began using the program this month. "We're going a stage at a time. We are first going to implement the fire reporting system."

The Euless Fire Department has been using the system since the first of the year. Its current system is housed in desktop computers in the fire stations, not on laptops, but Battalion Chief Scott Parsley said the department hopes to have it in all trucks by the end of May.

"It will be more dynamic when used as a field application," Chief Parsley said. "Historically, systems have been used only for incident reporting. . . . Now you can pull it up in real time and make it more useful."

Roger Dedoncker, a product specialist for Visionary Systems of Des Moines, Iowa, said the program was created and updated with firefighters' input.

The first version of "Firehouse" arrived on the market in 1993. He said the client base of 250 in January 1995 has grown to 1,700 nationwide. In Texas, 32 departments are using the software.

Chief Blankenship said the system "makes our job a lot easier".

Fire Hydrant Maintenance Using GPS and GIS

by David Allen, GIS Manager, City of Euless, Texas

Editor's Note: This article details a cooperative effort between the Euless Fire Department and the Euless GIS department. It is an example of the many available sources of information for populating FIREHOUSE Software with useful data.

Euless, a midsize city with a population of 44,000, is located midway between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Fire hydrant maintenance is a chore performed by the Fire Department. Firefighters visit each hydrant in the City to check its general condition. Sometimes they trim the weeds, grease the caps, or exercise the valve. However, because not all of the hydrants appear on the map, and not every hydrant is correctly located, the real purpose of this exercise is to familiarize firefighters with hydrant locations.

To improve incident reporting and computerize response preplanning, the Fire Department acquired new management software called FIREHOUSE Software. This software allows external data to be imported. Address data that had been tested and used by the City's GIS Department for the last 10 years was imported into FIREHOUSE Software. Addresses for all of the City's homes and businesses were now available from a pick list (lookup) on the incident report form.

Next the Fire Department requested fire hydrant data, specifically a unique identifier and latitude/longitude coordinates for each hydrant. Before the GIS staff members imported anything into FIREHOUSE Software, they wanted to perform an inventory to account for all hydrants. Since identifying and locating hydrants would be a lot of work, the staff decided to collect additional information on hydrant condition and manufacture date. Coincidentally, the GIS Department had acquired a GPS system for use in a utility collection project. The plan was to collect location data for visible features of the water, wastewater, and storm drain systems. The system, made by Tripod Data Systems, allows collection interface customization and uses built-in virtual reference station technology for on-the-fly data correction that gives real-time differentially corrected GPS readings accurate to one meter. This lightweight system is fully inclusive on the range pole and requires no backpack or bellybag.

Cooperation Pays Off

While considering how to implement both the hydrant and the utility project, the GIS staff realized that fire hydrants are visible features of the water system. The GIS staff realized that firefighters could use the GPS receiver purchased for the utility project to collect latitude/longitude coordinates and other hydrant features. However, there were a whole host of fields in FIREHOUSE Software that the Fire Department wanted to populate. Inputting data for all these fields would be far too much for a firefighter standing in the hot sun.

This was when the spirit of cooperative effort paid off. If the firefighters collected some data in the field, the GIS staff would populate the remaining FIREHOUSE Software fields using information available from the water system map. The field data to be collected included year of manufacture (which is cast into the side of the hydrant's base), make; general condition, the name of the street the hydrant faced, a memo describing what maintenance was performed, verification that the blue reflector was correctly placed in the street; and (of course) the location of the hydrant captured using the GPS unit. Firefighters would also rivet a metal tag stamped with the hydrant's unique identifier to the barrel of the hydrant.

Training the Fire Department staff to use the GPS proved to be extremely simple. The original plan was to team firefighters with the GIS staff for the first day and supply follow-up training as needed. After collecting data at three or four hydrants, the firefighters were comfortable using the system and needed no further training. Combining the hydrant attribute data collected in the field with additional data that existed in the GIS, and the water system map data, supplied all the desired information.

The hydrant information now included a unique ID, a street address, size of the feeder main, fire response zone, hydrant model, fire district, nearest station, and the latitude/longitude translated from the State Plane coordinate system. In all, 18 fields were populated and transferred to FIREHOUSE Software.

Added Benefits

Not only was useful data added to the FIREHOUSE Software but the GPS location of the hydrant helped increase the accuracy of the water map. New hydrants were added, bogus hydrants were removed, and most of the other hydrants were shifted slightly to correctly represent their true location. The same procedure will be performed on the valves to increase the accuracy of the City's water maps. In addition to these benefits, the project has the potential to help in other ways.

The Public Works Department describes the location of hydrants that are being taken out of service for water line repairs to police and fire dispatchers. Prior to the hydrant survey these descriptions were often limited to "the one in front of the third house on the left north of the intersection." Dispatch was often confused about exactly which hydrant was out of service. Now hydrants are referenced by the unique identifier. It is clear which hydrant is down. The Public Works Department is also using ArcExplorer to look up hydrant ID numbers by street address or graphic selection. This test project lets staff identify hydrants that require maintenance that the Fire Department would not normally perform. The latitude/longitude coordinates for locations in the City can quickly be approximated based on the nearest hydrant. The Fire Department may provide hydrant coordinates to the Care Flight helicopter ambulance so that it can find locations more quickly.

About half of the City has been inventoried. The full value of the project has yet to be realized, but the payoff is already apparent and the future can only bring more benefits. Next, the GIS staff will coordinate with the Public Works Department to collect location points for the remainder of the visible features of the water system, the sewer system, and finally the storm drains. The firefighters will wrap up their project soon and are searching for additional uses for GPS. Actually they just had too much fun playing with this cool new technology!

Special Thanks

The author thanks Matt Lehman of Tripod Data Systems for the use of a GPS unit during his ESRI user conference presentation. Thanks also go to Chief Koontz and Scott Parsley of the Euless Fire Department for their help in making this project a reality and to Dan McLean, manager of information services, for prying free the money to purchase the GPS receiver in the first place!

President Bush Acknowledges Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority Fire & Rescue

Pleasant Hill Fire Department Wins National Award

Two Fire Rigs Gain Laptop Link

by Eric A. Howald of the Keizertimes

With a simple double tap on a computer screen, members of the Keizer Fire District are more prepared than ever to fight fires on the fly.

In recent months, the district has installed two Panasonic Toughbook laptop computers into the most-used vehicles in its fleet. Data that once required multiple binders and time-consuming searches can now be retrieved with the flickof a fingertip.

The ease of access to all this information is going to make us more efficient when fighting fires," said Rod Conway, duputy fire marshal, who spearheaded the effort to get the computers installed.

Through a wireless connection to the Willamette Valley Communications Center via the city of Keizer, the computers receive and send information to dispatch.

When a call comes in to 9-1-1, the dispatcher immediately sends the location to the computers in the Keizer vehicles. A simple address can open a cornucopia of information inside the mobile data unit.

From the on-board computer using Firehouse Software programs, Keizer firefighters and emergency medical technicians can access city maps, building diagrams, locations of the nearest fire hydrants, information about chemicals stored on site and even photos of the actual structure.

A lot of this information we've accumulated through business inspections, and we've had it for a while, but never this easily accessible," said Conway.

The system also tracks vehicle movement as the district responds to a call. Crews can signal dispatch when they are en route to a location, when they've cleared a call, and when the vehicle is back in service.

onway said allowing crews to log their own dispatch times means that district data regarding the response times will be more accurate.

We used to have to wait for the dispatchers to log the times, but they could get caught up with another call and our response times would suffer," he said/

In addition to keeping tabs on district vehicles, the new system records the movements of other emergency services, like the Keizer Police.

We can also tell if other emergency crews are on scene and what they've seen and done up to the point we arrive." said Capt. Brian Butler.

It also means less traffic over the radio that can lead to confusion."

The new computers will prove most useful on calls for commercial structures, Conway said.

Those are the buildings that we have the most information about because of regular inspections, but it can prove invaluable in those instances," he said.

For example, in the Keizer Skyline Ford building, the electrical control panel is located on the mezzanine level - a holdover from when the building was a theater.

We had several guys on staff who may not have known it was a theater and may not realize it has a mezzanine level," he said.

Eventually, the program may allow site commanders to plan vehicle deployment before arriving on the scene by drawing on the building schematic on the screen. The newly created file could then be saved and reviewed at a later date.

Additional computers may be installed in other district vehicles as the need and cost dictate. The district budgeted its own funds to pay for the first two computers and for the wireless connection fees.

The panasonic Toughbook computers installed in the two vehicles cost about $4,000 each. The Toughbook computer is a rugged laptop built to withstand the vibration of traveling at high speeds.