One agency that has found success with data-collection software is the Washington Township Fire Department in Ohio. The department uses its planning software for overall data collection, incident command, EMS, incident investigations, occupancy data, inspections, staffing, activities, training, scheduling, inventory control, and daily journaling used for morning briefings. The department also is applying for ISO Class 1 rating, and is using its software in the application process. Jack McCoy is the department’s EMS director.

Where are the fire and life-safety benefits to having the most up-to-date information available to all responders?
For me, the number one benefit is speed of access. I think about the old days when we carried the 5-inch-thick preplan books. You’d have four or five of them up in the cab, and you’d have to try to turn around and you’d blow your shoulder trying to pick up a 35-pound book, trying to jostle it in the truck.

For instance, the particular preplan on the building I’m in, you use the browse menu and touch the topic, and it pulls up all the information on that particular occupancy. Speed of access is critical.

Using drawings and such, we can identify where are the shut-offs, the electrical and gas, the panels, all the control rooms, detector locations and such, so we can grid a building off and tell a guy, “Go to the third floor, D side, and see if your detector really is activated.” We also know where to access and egress the building, so our guys going in know how they can get out. We know where to place apparatus in relation to hazards, exposures or connections.

One of the biggest benefits for us is the voice activation/voice output option in the incident-command module. You can touch a single button, and it will read to you a pre-selected list of tactical information. You’re hands-off, your eyes are on the road, you’re helping the driver watch what’s coming, and you’re looking for hazards while everyone in the truck is hearing the tactical information: “Don’t forget about he hazard of chemicals on this floor, you will need 12,000gpm fire flow,” whatever you choose to put in. You select from a number of different lists, and it will collate that and read it off to you.

The guys are getting dressed, looking for their gear, and while they’re doing that, their eyes are off the road and they’re on the computer screen or in the preplan book. Worst-case scenario, they’re not paying attention. … We can multitask, but visual multitasking is difficult. When you use a hearing sense, you can separate that from the tactile visual sense.

Are there specific benefits to managing the logistics of this effort with software rather than paper?
The biggest one — and my history is with the Army from years ago — I remember when we would update an SOG, and you’d have a list of 75, 100 books. You’d have to account for a piece of paper moving from where you created it to that book and then back to that list that would have to signed for. “Yes, book number 4 got that piece of paper and replaced page 10.”

With this, we sit at a desk, and once the document is completed, you hit synchronize. When the guys turn their computers on in the morning, everyone has the same information at the same time and in the same format, and it’s accountable. We know that every device synchs, so we know they got the information. And that is a huge benefit — the savings of time.

Imagine if we’re trying to update books, and one truck is out on a run when we make the rounds. Now we have to go back and find them. We may not get to them for two days, but a day later they need the information. Information is power, and they have it right then. And that’s really important to me.

Do you find that you collect information about occupancies that may not be specifically related to suppression? If so, how do you keep that from cluttering your suppression efforts?
There are a ton of fields in the occupancy records. When we’re out in the field, we can hide the fields that we don’t need, like secondary and tertiary contacts. I don’t care so much about the inspection history in the field. We might want to look at prior violations for the last three months, but not for the last 30 years.

The nice part is the information stays in the system, but we don’t have to see it. You can kind of shorten your list a little bit.

Are you able to access drawings or other related preplan graphics?
We’ve been using electronic data collection since 1992 in some format, and in the field since 2001 (when we started writing software here), before we landed on Firehouse Software.

The graphics are great. If I had to look at a photocopy on a piece of paper, after a year in the truck, it doesn’t look the same. If I look at a color photograph that can rotate in the software, it’s pretty cool going onto the scene. We can even upload images and give access to our police department — if they have a tactical situation at an address, we can share that. They don’t have to have the whole software suite; they just have to have the preplan suite to look at everything we created.

Is there pre-incident plan information (not easily relatable to drawings) that you’ve found to be helpful in the field?
Probably the tactical information like the fire flows, square footage, access and egress points, where the connections are, how many floors, where the major hazards are. It all comes from inspection information, the site visits we make. With this particular software, we do a preplan and inspection in the field with our fire-safety inspectors (which are a division of the fire department). They take that information and upload it into the occupancy record.

The occupancy record can be really featured in the incident-command module, so we can just hit the occupancy record, decide what we want to show, and from the scene we can tell all the information that we normally wouldn’t see.

We’re using a separate incident-command module that’s giving assignments and placing vehicles, and we’re using the occupancy record to drive that placement. I think the ability to go back and forth between different modules in the same piece of software is pretty cool. … What can you say? Data makes decisions.

Can you use software to reference sources that are not specific to a single occupancy?
In EMS, we keep our protocol in there. In inspections and occupancies, you have things like the NIOSH books and CHEMTREC. Let’s say you have a manufacturing facility with a hundred carboys of chemicals in there. We can list those chemicals in there and tie that back to the hazard evaluation through NIOSH. [We can even use it] to preplan a plume during a hazardous explosion, so you can actually plot with the software and tie it right into the inspection or the occupancy [module].

There’s also are .wav files that do translations. For example, if I pulled up, and there were people standing outside, and I asked, “Are there people trapped in the fire?” I then recognized that they speak Spanish, and I could just touch “Spanish” and scroll down for the pre-canned message, “Are there people trapped in the fire?” and then turn the volume up and let them listen. It’s a really cool idea for us language-limited people.

We have a very diverse population here, so we’re fortunate in that [the translator] helps keep the culture pretty clear around here. You can’t always speak to them. So it’s a valuable tool, and it’s really free [for download].

Can you provide examples of preplan software–supported tactical decisions that have affected safety or mitigation efforts on scene?
We have some ravines, and we recently had a rescue where a young man fell into the ravine and into unconsciousness just prior to our arrival. Our guys train in there quite often, but they’re not 100% familiar with all the walk-up access points. They ended up doing a vertical-lift rescue. Had we had a more detailed preplan of that ravine, [they would have known that there] 40 yards down the ravine, there’s a walk-up slope that would have been a lot quicker and perhaps safer.

You can use the software not only for buildings, but for the general geography of your place. … We recently introduced a dive team into our department, following two drownings in some retention ponds that we have. We have over 600 retention ponds in the district. The folks probably had suffered a heart attack or stroke prior to crashing into the pond; that’s what the autopsies are suggesting. However, they’re still in the ponds, and we’re called upon to act. If we had a topographical view of the bottom of that pond, we would know where the car had settled. It would speed up access and also identify underwater hazards.

Anytime we can pre-identify hazards and have a graphic representation, we’re a lot better off. We can move quicker and safer. …

In the future, we’ll be able to assign a score to an occupancy based on preplan information, let’s say a loss score or a hazard or value score. Let’s say we have a 6,000-square-foot building that’s vacant and next door we have a 6,000-square-foot building sister building that’s identical but is storing ancient artwork. If we pull up and both are on fire, without that preplan information and that acute, detailed knowledge of what’s in there, which one do we attack? We can use this way down the line to determine response values or effort values.

Does your software vendor include an integrated drawing solution with their package?
My understanding is that FIREHOUSE Software is working on a drawing package that is scheduled for release in the near future. If it were available today, you could drag your finger across the screen, and the software would interpret that this is a line and it would create a crisp, sharp line that would be the same for everything that you do. All of our crayon-type drawings would go away. It will be able to convert all our old auto-CAD drawings or the not-to-scale on-site drawings that we have. More importantly, it will unify the look. The representations will be familiar for every building that we do.

In addition, with the incident-command module on a touchscreen laptop, [the user] will be able to circle a spot on a building and make that his primary focus. Or if a building is contained by the firewall, for instance, he can X out that part and say it’s contained. He can write on there with his finger that Engine 91 is at this location instead of having to drag and drop an icon. And then that would upload to the historical record. We would have a more accurate accounting of what we actually did on the scene.

What would you say to someone who remains skeptical about using preplan software in the field?
I would say, “Sir, I really appreciate your skepticism and value the fact that you’re cautious about spending taxpayer funds unnecessarily; however, have you thought about the increased speed and how much safer it is not having to carry a huge preplan book in the truck and how convenient it is?” I would explain all the different parts of the graphics and managing information that has virtually instantaneous sharing.

We’re probably the first department in Ohio to use field data collection for EMS. We actually wrote the software here, in conjunction with another department. It really worked fine. It uploaded to the state and gave everyone the information they needed. But the software company didn’t have the total package, so we migrated. Just the dollar savings in data management for EMS alone was huge.

In preplans, the dollar-loss potential is great, and I think preplanning can help reduce life loss by doing a better job of identifying hazards and keeping them apparent.