By Eva Ruth Moravec
The San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO — Two days after San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told the City Council that the department’s new computer-aided dispatch system is “taking our city light-years ahead,” the union announced its widespread disappointment in the system, claiming technical complications endanger both firefighters and the public.
“I really think the citizens need to know the truth,” said District Chief Chris Steele, president of the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “I’m tired, and the firefighters are tired, of hearing it characterized as ... the best thing since sliced bread.”
At the top of Steele’s list of complaints heard in executive board meetings is a litany of issues he says leads to a longer overall response time.
“In this industry, delay is death,” he said. “We have to get places within eight minutes, or we can’t reverse brain damage.”
The response “is just totally off the wall,” said Steve Gaffigan, assistant director of the city’s information technology department who worked side by side with SAFD personnel to implement the new system. It’s “a slap in the face for people in the Fire Department who worked on this.”
Yvette Granato, the department’s assistant chief of communications, said she didn’t expect this response.
“My understanding is that we’re addressing the complaints we get from the field,” she said. “If the union is getting information that I’m not, we need to know about it so that we can fix it.”
City officials say since the new system was implemented July 28, response times have gotten slightly shorter. Assistant City Manager Erik Walsh said it takes firefighters on average 4.57 minutes to get to an incident, compared with 4.72 minutes previously. A Fire Department spokeswoman said information on the average response time under the new system was not immediately available.
But Steele said the new system is causing a delay before calls are dispatched because call takers must ask callers a set of questions before calls can be dispatched by a computerized voice. He said that adds to the time it takes for firefighters to even get the call.
Administrators say the increased information allows responding firefighters to be more prepared and to better prioritize calls.
Replacing an ‘antiquated system’
Two days before Steele’s announcement, Hood told the council the $1 million system, which integrates with a $16 million regional computer-aided dispatch, is working well. It replaces what Walsh and others call a “30-year-old antiquated system.”
Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Schertz are already using CAD, and neither has expressed the issues Steele has. San Antonio police will be next to join the system, officials said.
“This is taking our city light-years ahead,” Hood said Tuesday. “It’s wonderful for our firefighters, and really taking us into the future.”
Steele said problems include the computer sending the wrong units, dispatching too many units, and firefighters’ inability to understand the computerized voice.
Granato said the system selects a responding company by evaluating a unit’s proximity to the scene, and traffic and speed zones in the area.
“In the past, within the Fire Department, you always have a district,” she said. “Now with this new system, it dispatches based on our position, which is constantly being updated. It’s different, because certain guys are very protective of their districts.”
Steele said if the new system can’t be fixed, he’d prefer scrapping the entire thing and starting from scratch.
“Every day there are issues. I find it hard to believe that they don’t know these things are happening, but that’s why we needed to make a rallying call,” he said.
Walsh, Granato and Gaffigan all say the system will be improved upon for some time, based on feedback they get from firefighters in the field, but widespread changes aren’t likely.
“It’s about modernizing the system: We’ve gone from using a brick telephone to an iPhone,” Walsh said. “It’s been implemented, and we’ve seen no major issues. We’re just going to continue to tweak the system and monitor.”
Copyright 2010 San Antonio Express-News
All Rights Reserved