Dispatch
The Surrey Fire Service operates a regional fire dispatch centre that dispatches
for Surrey’s 17 fire halls as well as 33 other fire departments for a total of
69 fire halls. In the Metro Vancouver Regional District: White
Rock, Langley City, Township of Langley, Port Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Pitt
Meadows, City of North Vancouver, District of North Vancouver, West Vancouver,
Bowen Island and Lions Bay. In the Squamish Lillooet Regional District:
Lillooet, Bralorne and Seton Valley. And in the Columbia Shuswap Regional
District: Falkland, Silver Creek, Ranchero/Deep Creek, Salmon Arm,
Tappen/Sunnybrae, White Lake, Shuswap, Eagle Bay, Scotch Creek/Lee Creek,
Celista, Anglemont, Sicamous, Swansea Point, Malakwa, Revelstoke, Golden,
Nicholson and Field. We protect a population of approximately 1 million across
30,382 km2 of British Columbia. In 2010 we handled over 57,000
incidents and received over 14,000 911 calls.
The Surrey Regional Fire Dispatch Centre has 4 dispatchers working at any one
time. We have 16 full time staff and 11 part time staff. Full time
dispatchers work a four on four off schedule the same as firefighters working
two 12 hour day shifts followed by two 12 hour night shifts with four days off
in between. Our part time staff covers vacations, sick leave and other
vacancies in the dispatch centre to ensure 24/7/365 coverage.
Along with call taking and dispatching emergency fire-rescue incidents, we also
handle after hours emergency requests for public works/engineering departments
in Surrey, White Rock, Langley City, Township of Langley, Port Coquitlam, Maple
Ridge and Pitt Meadows. Additionally, we handle callouts for the Shuswap
Emergency Program.
Surrey Dispatch works with a number of different radio systems for each fire
department including VHF, UHF, 800MHz ECOMM wide area radio system, fibre optic
links to the Columbia Shuswap and radio interconnect phones to our more distant
departments in the Squamish Lillooet RD and eastern Columbia Shuswap RD all
from fire hall 1 in Surrey.
When a caller dials 911 they are initially routed to the public safety answering point
(PSAP) for their area where they determine what kind emergency responder is
required, Police, Fire or Ambulance, and in which city or jurisdiction the emergency
is located. The caller is then down-streamed to the appropriate (SSAP –
Secondary Service Answering Point) dispatch centre. All 911 calls for the
fire departments we dispatch for are routed to the Surrey Fire Dispatch Centre
at Fire Hall #1 in Surrey. The entirety of our dispatch coverage area is
served by enhanced 911. This means that when you dial 911 from a landline
phone company billing information provides the call taker with your address,
phone number and billing name automatically. When calling 911 from a
cellular phone that is GPS enabled (if there is available wireless service) the
address of the nearest cellular tower the caller’s phone is using you phone is
using, the phone number and your GPS location is displayed for the call taker.
The later technology is fairly new in BC and is invaluable in helping emergency
services find your location even the caller is unaware of their location. While
the accuracy is not 100%, the ability to generate a location within a given
diameter is fairly reliable.
Once the call taker determines the location and the nature of the emergency an incident
in created in the computer aided dispatch (CAD) system and transferred to the
dispatcher for that fire department. Within a split second the computer
determines the appropriate fire apparatus needed for the emergency as per pre
programmed responses and assigns the closest available trucks to the
emergency. These trucks are displayed for the dispatcher and he or she
proceeds to open the speakers in the fire hall or activate radio pagers for
volunteers and announce the apparatus assigned, the address, the apartment
number (if applicable), the building name (if applicable), the map number and
the tactical radio channel to the firefighters.
Surrey dispatchers provide ongoing support to the callers and the responding fire
personnel during the incident as required.
