By Gianni Salisbury
The Day
OLD LYME, Conn. — When arriving at the scene of an emergency, Deputy Fire Chief James Caramante typically has to first assess what equipment he needs and what action is needed.
Thanks to Community Connect, the department’s new emergency response program, Caramante and the fire department can assess what to do before they arrive, allowing them to more quickly help people in danger.
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With this new program, I can now start stuff before I am even there and make our response time quicker,” Caramante said, adding it also eliminates many of the unknowns when responding to an emergency.
Community Connect allows residents and businesses to create an account and add information about themselves and their properties. Then, when the fire department is dispatched to their house, Carmante can access that information.
Users can input information such as how many floors and rooms the house has, how many people live there, and their photos, who resides in each room, the number of pets and their usual location.
Other options include building blueprints, the type of heating system, the location of bedrooms and pools, the type of siding and roofing, and access information such as gate, door and security codes.
They can also include information about hazardous materials on the property, medical or special needs of residents, whether a resident has a disability, the location of fire extinguishers and fire alarm panels, access points, and other details that could help firefighters better understand the property before arriving. Users can update their information at any time.
Caramante said the information allows the department to act more efficiently instead of learning as they go.
He offered a scenario in which a person needs to be rescued and the information from Community Connect allows him to first determine which trucks and equipment are needed for a person who is disabled, relies on oxygen and resides in the basement. Rather than sending a fire engine first, he can send a rescue truck with the necessary medical equipment and tools.
“And before I’m even on scene, which typically is three to five minutes, our trucks can roll in a different response order and come to you sooner and faster,” said Caramante.
He said the program can be especially useful in a town like Old Lyme, which has many seasonal residents. Users can indicate whether they are full-time or seasonal residents, helping the department know whether someone may be inside during an emergency.
The department has been using the program for about a year and has 200 users in town.
Caramante said it has proved successful so far.
One of the department’s first calls using the program involved a fire alarm going off in a restaurant at a shopping center. There was no fire, just a malfunctioning alarm but customers were forced to exit the building on a busy weekend night. The department could not reach the alarm panel because it was behind a locked door and gate. But the business owner had entered the property’s information into Community Connect, and the department was able to turn off the alarm.
“Because of that, we were able to get the business up and running again quickly rather than cutting or forcing two doors to go and access that alarm panel. We got the business up and running faster, less downtime, and less upset customers. That’s the first time we used it and were like, ‘This is awesome,’ ” Caramante said.
Community Connect is part of the fire department’s overall software program called First Due, which it has been using for about two years. The program has allowed the department to combine multiple software programs into one system, saving the town $8,000 a year and improving efficiency.
“There was no intercommunication between the software programs we had. They required a lot of maintenance and upkeep. And being that we’re volunteers, I was doing a lot of that, and it was hours upon hours a month of just upkeep and maintenance on three different software platforms,” Caramante said. “This offers us a platform to do our incident reporting, pre-plans, pretty much anything and everything that we use. It alerts us when we get calls, so we don’t have to carry pagers around or rely primarily on pagers. It alerts us via tablets, cellphones, any mobile device on an app or a computer.”
For those concerned about the program’s security, Caramante said, First Due has “bank-level security.”
Department volunteers are trained on how to use the program, and access is restricted based on an individual’s role. Caramante encouraged anyone with questions about Community Connect to reach out to him.
“I would encourage everybody to get on there and put the information in. You never know when you’re going to need us, and the more information we have before we get there, the better prepared we are to help you, Caramante said.
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