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During the San Bruno fire, I found Twitter to be the best source of live and up to date information. Hundreds of people posted updates by the second, like “horrific fireball continues to burn”. There were also accurate updates of the location of the rapidly spreading fire. Could this be the fastest form of emergency communication?

There are limitations to an emergency dispatch system that relies on transferring vocal information. On average, it takes 60 seconds for a 9-11 dispatcher to identify a problem and notify appropriate emergency responders of the exact location. Think about how fast that is. It takes me longer than 60 seconds to order a cheeseburger at a fast food drive-thru, and somehow my order still comes out wrong. But a lot more than my cheeseburger order can go wrong in 60 seconds…

Take a large incident, with hundreds of panicked callers.  The dispatcher must relay each caller’s exact location to a single incident commander.  And the incident commander, while in communication with the dispatcher, must simultaneously send multiple resources to each caller’s aide. Sounds like a hectic day at the office. Do you remember what you ate for breakfast? How about where you put your keys? Now try to remember where 100 victims are and the location of 100 different emergency response resources in conjunction with listening to radio dispatches.

The commanders of these large incidents are extremely good at what they do. With a calm voice they manage complete chaos. Imagine what they could do if they had technology on their side.

Twitter geographical location updates could notify emergency responders of a victim’s exact location. Let’s take this a step further. An incident commander could use a device, such as an iPad, to visualize the locations of the victims and with the touch of finger send resources to their aide.

If you are not a firefighter, I know exactly what you are thinking, “This is yesterday’s technology. Mobile devices have been capable of this for years. It’s crazy that all fire departments don’t use this technology already.”

With the economic crisis, departments are cutting their budget by ten, twenty, and thirty percent. There is no money for new technology. We are laying off firefighters and shutting down stations; entire cities are going bankrupt.

So how do we bring yesterday’s technology to the fire service? Anyone have a friend at Apple?

Resources to consider:

iPhone in action, check out how this progressive bay area department uses technology: http://www.firedepartment.org/live_dispatch/iphone.asp