NFPA 1710 turnout times

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Permalink Reply by Larry Lasich on November 27, 2008 at 7:59am

At any time, day or night? What's the bottle neck?

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Permalink Reply by Mikal Barnett on November 27, 2008 at 7:57pm

Night time in particular but the numbers are showing we are slow getting on the road during the daylight hours also. Part of the issue is getting through the tones and dispatch info and checking the wall map before leaving. This can take up to 20-30 seconds. Some of our units have MDT's with mapping capability so this may eliminate the need for a stop at the wall map.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Lasich on November 28, 2008 at 12:23pm

When one of the departments that I work at pages out, Dispatch will come over the radio with "EMS, stand by for page" or "Fire, Stand by for page". Gives you time to start running for the correct rig, get turnouts on, etc. Ask if your dispatch can help you out with that. Also, putting map books in all the rigs and getting update info after you call enroute can reduce wait time.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Lee on November 28, 2008 at 2:57pm

What ever happened to street / district familiarization tests? This can eliminate the need to stop at the wall map if your personnel will learn all streets in their first due district and most thoroughfares in their second due. Then with mapbooks in the apparatus you can look up the detail streets in the second due and beyond.
I know that none of us will be 100% correct on street locations 100% of the time, but with regular study you will find that at least one member of the crew will remember where that street is! Other items that we have struggled with is a poor sound system that tends to require the firefighters to wait until the end of the dispatch before responding to the apparatus due to not being able to hear the speakers, or unable to understand the message on other speakers. We are working on correcting these situations in an effort to get our turnout time down to acceptable levels.
Interesting topic and I look forward to other responses.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Reed on December 3, 2008 at 5:39pm

I too work for a fire dept. that mans both ems and fire from the same station, its very hard to adapt to, map tests are always good, however you always want to make sure your not mixing up your streets at 3'o clock in the morning on a call you could or should have been at 5 min prior, i think some of the advances in this field help in conjuction with studying your district, like maybe you use a toughbook for ems documentation, and have a GPS locator program to see your destanation, I know we have TOM TOM navigators in all our apparatus, which is a lighter expense way to getting on the road faster, and knowing where your going, perhaps though navigation is not your issue, and getting out the door is a matter of better communication and knowing where one's next assignment might be whether its gut bucket or pumper, or maybe creating a system of rotation based on your manpower and dept needs about who does what next, glad you brought it up, I was thinking on occasion I was the only one struggling with this issue.

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Permalink Reply by Larry Lasich on December 3, 2008 at 7:57pm

We have a bunch of dirt road to dirt road to a trailer park in our area. At Oh dark, thirty in the mornin', it's easy to get lost without turn by turn directions from the right seat.

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Permalink Reply by Mat Fratus on December 7, 2008 at 11:35pm

I feel your pain! Although we don’t transport, we do provide EMS and fire response (about 26,000 calls per year). Meeting the 1-minute mark has been a challenge for us as well. We’ve found the problem to be part technical, and part habits. On the technical side, we had to work out the “ghosts” in the data capture first to make sure we were really looking at the right issues. Can’t emphasize this phase enough. Bad data leads to faulty conclusions, which lead so useless “solutions”. Our next step is to upgrade our station alerting system, which is obsolete, and we found that it was causing delays in the response. MDCs with mapping functions are a help too, but still no replacement for knowing your district!

Changing habits is always a little tougher. The bottom line is that everyone has to just drop what they’re doing and go to the call. No last bite of lunch, no long goodbyes on the phone, just get to the unit and GO. One minute IS NOT a lot of time, so even little hesitations can have an impact.
As I said, this is a continuing challenge for us, and I don’t think that we’ve found the perfect solution, but we have progressed. Thanks for starting the discussion. I see some other excellent observations and ideas here that will help.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Haefner on December 8, 2008 at 12:54am

Its hard to make the minuite mark. I usually run as medic and see the times most of the time. Its about one in six that I make one min, day or night. One way to possibly fix it is when you know its your call, run to the radio and call responding. Its cheating yes, but a lot of the time, there is no way to make the min mark. It will at least say one min on paper.

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