One Fire Department That Needs Fixing

When the police, fire fighters and paramedics stumble in their response to emergencies the cause may be a mix of the wrong technology, politics and organizational culture.

Toronto Fire Services, the city's fire department, was recently the subject of an investigative article in the Toronto Star which revealed among other things a less than adequate response time, as well as, typically, officials defensive in face of media inquiries.

One of the worst local disasters in recent memory in the Canadian city occurred last summer with a series of gas explosions and resultant fires in the north end at Sunrise Propane, resulting in two deaths and the temporary evacuation of thousands of people in surrounding neighborhoods.

While the situation could have been much worse in terms of casualties much of the local media and political attention was understandably focused on the safety practices of the owners of the propane site and lax provincial government regulations.

Now, almost a year later, the Star's reporter Kevin Donovan revealed that it took more than nine minutes before the first Toronto Fire Services pumper truck made it to the blast site, just over one mile from the station house.

This was not an isolated incident last year in Toronto. In two other fires in residential communities, fire fighters arrived ten minutes or more at one home after the police and ambulance had already arrived following a 9-1-1 call; and in a second home blaze fire fighters arrived nine or more minutes later -- despite being a little more than a mile from the nearest fire station.

Donovan does mention another shocking detail -- before the amalgamation in 1998 of Toronto with surrounding municipalities, the city of Toronto's original fire department had a good dispatch system but it was replaced by a more archaic dispatch system from the neighboring city of North York in the establishment of new larger metropolitan government -- incidentally headed by the former North York mayor, Mel Lastman.

What surprises criminologist Carrie Sanders in the Star's reporting is that the Toronto fire department has been relying on a dispatch system that was originally designed for police forces."It is being designed for one use and being adapted for a completely different organization, which requires more time, which then requires more work."

An assistant professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Sanders did her recent PhD thesis on the responses of police, fire fighters and paramedics to emergencies in two separate Canadian communities and the role that technology plays in the process.

The other glaring item at the Toronto fire department, as reported, is the lack of a GPS system which would allow the dispatchers to keep on top of their vehicles on the road or in the fire station. Instead, the dispatchers rely on a paper map on a metal board.

Sanders agrees it is hard to generalize about fire departments across North America. Some are using the latest available computerized dispatch systems; others are not.

A number of factors will influence the ability of city fire departments to respond to emergencies, she adds. "It would be dependent upon a number of factors such as available funding, organizational structure (i.e. volunteer versus paid) and location -- urban center versus municipal department."

Of course, Toronto is the largest city in Canada and presumably the most sophisticated. Maybe in some things like culture and urban planning, but certainly not its fire department.