GeoComm - St. Stephen, Minnesota

St. Stephen Fire Department’s emergency response system has come a long way since the days of writing individual house directions on index cards. This rural fire department located in Stearns County Minnesota embraced in-vehicle mapping technology nine years ago by implementing GeoLynx Mobile from GeoComm and is looking forward to the future of technology for arriving to the scene fast. Fire Chief Ray Trobec and Retired Assistant Chief and Training Officer Roger Trobec reflected on how the evolution of technology has affected how the department responds to emergency calls. “GeoLynx Mobile allows our responders to locate emergency sites immediately through the most efficient routes cutting precious minutes off of response times,” said Roger Trobec, “we no longer have to worry about our new responders who may not know where all the residents live; we know they can rely on the mapping software to direct them to the emergency.”

In 2001, the department implemented a location-based technology mapping software that displays driving directions for their emergency responders. Since purchasing the system the fire department leadership is confident that when the department has an emergency call the firefighters will not have any difficulty locating the caller, saving them critical time on emergency response.

In late 2000, shortly after the area converted from rural route address to street address, the twenty-six member fire department was having an increasingly difficult time locating emergency calls. St. Stephen Fire Department’s sixty square mile service area, including the city of St. Stephen as well as parts of Brockway and St. Wendel townships was also undergoing dramatic changes. The rural township was quickly shifting to a more residential area and the responders were no longer able to rely on their knowledge of where all their neighbors lived. The fire department first installed a more primitive mapping system that required the responders to manually type in the callers address; this caused problems if the house numbers or street names were entered incorrectly. Even when the addresses were entered correctly into the computer system it only put them within a mile of the scene. Adding to the fire departments frustration, many residents neglected to put the required four inch numbers on their mailboxes. For example, the department once had a call from a resident who shared a private drive with two other home owners, the resident had an emergency and although the responders were able to locate the private drive they had no idea which one of the three homes had the emergency, it was moments like those that increased their urgency for finding a new solution.

Upon hearing about GeoComm’s product GeoLynx Mobile, Ray and Roger finally felt this was a product that had the mapping accuracy the department needed. After some charitable contributions and many hours spent fundraising, the department was able to purchase GeoLynx Mobile and install it in three of their trucks as well as have a base unit at the fire hall, becoming the first fire department in the state to use the product. Not only did the new computer system automatically provide a map with driving directions it also showed the fire truck where they were in relation to the emergency. It eliminated some of the miscommunication between the dispatch center and the response crew, and provided them with a visual representation for making decisions in the field. The fire department immediately noticed a significant amount of time saved responding to emergency calls. GeoLynx Mobile now put them within five to fifty feet of the emergency, where it had previously only been within a mile.

GeoLynx Mobile, a GIS in-vehicle Navigation System, is set up so that when a resident places a 9-1-1 call, it is answered by Stearns County dispatch. The dispatcher is connected to a GPS server and is able to send the address directly to St. Stephen’s fire truck’s computer. The caller’s location is displayed on a map and there is an arrow showing the current location of the fire truck. The GPS server provides the response unit with turn by turn driving directions to the scene and even directs them around temporarily closed roads if needed. Most recently the fire department was responding to an accident on a nearby highway and they were not sure exactly where on the highway the accident was located. The dispatcher was able to put a marker on the map so the fire department responders were able to know exactly what location on the highway they had to respond. St. Stephen Fire Department also has a GeoLynx Mobile base unit at the fire hall which provides the crews who respond later with a printable map allowing them to also reach the emergency location through the most efficient route.

Since installing GeoLynx Mobile in 2001, St. Stephen Fire Department has been able to add GeoLynx Mobile to an additional vehicle and continues to enjoy the benefits of having such a good mobile response GIS system. In the future, St. Stephen Fire Department hopes to be able to synchronize their GeoLynx Mobile system with aerial maps and building blueprints so they can fully utilize all of features included in the software. This fire department has truly embraced the ways new and ever changing technology can aid them in responding to emergency calls, making them more efficient and increasingly important to the communities they serve.