Over the last decade there's been a great deal of debate over fire department deployment. The vast majority of the argument has been over the location, spacing and staffing of the fire stations themselves. That seems logical. After all, fire stations are where the trucks leave from, carrying firefighters to do the best they can to reduce the loss of life and property.

But fire agencies are finding that the fire dispatch center is playing more of a role in determining whether a department's performance is everything it is professed to be. As more and more fire agencies adopt a published standard of cover that's consistent with methodology suggested by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, this previously invisible aspect of the fire service is increasingly brought into the light. As a result, we may need to look more carefully at the process of receiving and transmitting alarm information to those fire companies that at times are so difficult to justify and sustain.

Back in the days of its original research, the IAFC's Accreditation Task Force recognized that there were time elements which preceded the activation of a fire company, as described by Rexford Wilson in Nine Steps From Ignition to Extinguishment. Wilson recognized many years ago that an emergency begins a long time before it comes to the attention of the fire department.

Fire Chief Charlie Rule and other members of the task force conducted a review process to determine the baseline for both alarm processing and turnout time. At the time there was little information in the literature. In all candor, this was not so much a scientific study as it was a collection of contemporary wisdom. Many fire agencies were not even tracking that information, and those that were used very primitive methods to collect it. Much of the data was entered manually and subject to variation.

The committee found a very wide range in the performance of different types of communication centers. If the communication center was under direct control of the fire department and an emergency call came straight to it, there was a very high degree of emphasis on alarm processing. If it wasn't under fire department control, the emphasis varied. Nonetheless, more than 100,000 alarm records were reviewed over about two years in order to establish some time frames in the original drafts.

According to Rule, after assessing the number of calls that were available, the committee determined that a 50-second alarm-processing time was about the average. Therefore, the CFAI's initial task force took that to be a baseline, which was adopted with the caveat that additional study was needed. That concern has turned out to be a very accurate assessment of an emerging need because the 50-second figure has been picked up by many other entities. However, few have taken the time to conduct their own assessment.

To really determine whether a communication center is doing a decent job for the fire department, chief fire officials have to examine the different response components using the latest technology. Every effort needs to be made to eliminate guessing and replace it with hard data. Among the most critical steps is evaluating how well the communication center processes and transmits alarms to the fire station. Referencing the Response-Time Cascade in the CFAI Self-Assessment Manual, the first point of initiation is when the phone rings in the dispatch center that is under the control of the fire department.

Therein lies one of the initial difficulties. More and more fire agencies have to receive their alarms after they have been processed by a 911 center or public safety answering points, which typically are run by law enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies view calls coming in for law enforcement differently from fire calls.

Those departments that did a faster job of alarm processing tended to have systems to where there were a minimum number of people involved in the chain of events. Simplified dispatch centers that served a minimum number of fire stations were able to have the person who received the call also transmit it to the station. As you move up in the size and complexity of communication centers, call takers aren't always responsible for transmission. And while computerization of dispatch centers has increased, the actual performance of the dispatch center in processing alarms hasn't been looked at as rigorously as it should be.

In some areas the 911 call goes through a screening process during which a person determines whether to notify police, fire or EMS. The self-assessment task force's initial responsibility and accountability for alarm-processing time began the minute the fire department or the person dispatching the call was aware that it was a fire- or EMS-related issue, but the reality is that very few people have ever conducted extensive research into this area.

With respect to local policy, a line must be drawn that identifies the expectation of the public. What is the basis of the confidence they have in the system? It is when the person calling hangs up the phone. That's when the clock starts ticking. What is the time frame to make sure that interest is best served?

Regardless of the speed at which 911 calls are received in the center, the information must be processed quickly and appropriate emergency calls must be screened out quickly. Failure to do so misleads the public with respect to response time, and the fire agency will be held accountable for that “slower” performance on the fireground.

It has been noted in several self-assessment processes that some in the law enforcement community don't take this problem very seriously. This is somewhat unfortunate. But more importantly, there is a matter of public policy that poses the hypothetical question: Can a fire department with extensive delays in its alarm-processing times be credible?

The answer begins with how a fire agency defines travel time to the community. If a fire agency has established a total travel time of five minutes 90% of the time, it is creating a public expectation. While that time may be accurate, it must be supported with a self-assessment of the alarm-processing and turn-out times to avoid misleading the public with respect to what happens when people call for emergency assistance.

The self-assessment process requires that a study be conducted to determine what how much time is absorbed by alarm processing and turn out. If it exceeds the baseline of 50 seconds, then research into the reason why is appropriate. It may be completely appropriate for a community to identify an alarm-processing time of 60 seconds, 90% of the time, but I think it unreasonable to expect a 90-second or even a two-minute alarm processing time to be acceptable for any community. Recent experience has borne out that this does occur.

The self-assessment process is designed to seek improvements prior to seeking accreditation. Therefore, any agency with excessively long alarm-processing times should do everything in its power to re-engineer or re-design its system to bring that baseline down to something more within professional standards. This process is a vital part of really looking at the chain of events that go into community's response coverage performance. The real problem begins when the agency handling dispatch won't cooperate. Refusal to provide documentation or achieve a reasonable response time for fire agencies could be grounds for failing meet public expectations.

Those of us who have been studying the issues of alarm time and travel time for the last 10 to 15 years clearly realize that without a baseline, the remainder of a fire department's resources are reducing the effectiveness of the taxpayer's funds to create the station in the first place. Sending an adequately staffed engine company to the scene of an emergency that is already gone beyond the ability to limit the fire to the room of origin will result in some rather spectacular fires but doesn't do much for ensuring the quality of life and the safety of property within that jurisdiction.

What needs to be done by almost all fire agencies is an audit of the two initiation steps of the response and deployment process: the alarm-processing time and the turn-out time. Contrary to contemporary wisdom that these things take care of themselves, they do not. They need to be evaluated every bit as much as the travel time. Failure to establish performance requirements for these two very important steps can significantly erode the credibility of the travel-time component.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.