The Chicago Fire Department is field-testing handheld computers, providing incident commanders with layouts and floor plans of buildings. Information can be uploaded to the devices while in route to a scene.
A new Firehouse Automated Systems Technology (FAST) project aims to enhance training, increase efficiency and accountability, and reduce costs at all Chicago firehouses. Mayor Richard Daley said that Chicago’s city government has become a national leader in the use of technology.
The new gear may have received a trial under fire, today.
A major fire in a Chicago high-rise building today has left 25 people hurt, 13 of them seriously. It started around 6:30 p.m. on the building’s 29th floor, authorities said. The blaze spread to the building’s 30th floor by late Monday, and its cause remained unknown. The LaSalle National Bank Building, was built in 1934 — before sprinklers were required on every floor in high-rises,
The fire comes 14 months after a 35-story building fire in downtown Chicago ago killed six people. An investigation of the October 2003 blaze concluded that the deaths could have been prevented if there had been sprinklers and unlocked stairwells, and if firefighters had searched for victims sooner and kept out smoke and heat.
The victims were found 90 minutes after firefighters arrived on the scene, partly because of confusion concerning the number of stairwells that were in the building and where the victims were located, the paper reported.
Handhelds that contain building plans was one of the recommendations of the investigation. No word yet on whether the handheld computers, if used, are proving effective.
Firehouse Magazine lists lots of Fire and EMS software while the Fire-EMS Information Network lists dozens of Palm applications and lots of radio vendors as does Pocket Mobility. Hansen’s PocketPC solutions for public works are popular and used for meter reading, parks management, water and other public services around the world. MobilE.M.S. is a form based application for in-field data collection for use on rugged Windows CE devices with cellular/WiFi connections.
The Chicago Emergency Communications Center is 161,000 square feet and houses Police, Fire and EMS dispatch operations. The system utilizes 1,000 miles of telecommunications cables which includes one of the largest privately owned fiber optic networks in the world, consolidating multiple police and fire sub-systems into a single emergency communications network.
Chicago’s huge fleet of government vehicles is tracked by a Web-based geographic information system. ESRI’s ArcIMS server provides access the Web interface. GeoAnalytics, a Madison, Wis., consulting firm, developed the Web-based GIS front end. The Chicago Police Department uses GIS to map crime information in geographic context. GPS User reviews popular PocketPC mapping programs used in conjunction with GPS receivers.
Chicago has one of America’s biggest CAD/911 systems. Supplied by Northrop Grumman IT, the system enables Chicago police and fire departments to automatically identify and pinpoint the location of callers and then locate available resources to mobilize the most effective responses in the shortest time.
The Chicago Area Radio Monitoring Association gets it live. The International Association of Fire Chiefs puts their life on the line.
The Nextel Consensus decision makes an additional 4 MHz of radio spectrum available in the 800 MHz band for public safety. This equates to approximately an additional 40 talk groups. Fire departments and other public safety organizations that may be required to reconfigure their equipment will not have to pay for any re-tuning or for new radios.
The Homeland Security Act of 2002 designated the Office for Domestic Preparedness as the principal federal agency responsible for the preparedness of the United States for acts of terrorism, including coordinating preparedness efforts at the federal level, and working with all state and local emergency response providers.
Below are the Assistance to Firefighters grants awarded to each state.
Here are Recent Citizen Reports on the Chicago Fire.
