For years the Farmington Fire Department has been using the software that converts emergency calls to texts. The software, called Remote Print Manager (RPM), was developed by Brooks Internet Software. While the call-to-text technology sounds rudimentary, having the system in place allows paramedics and emergency personnel to rely less on the radio and serves as a backup alerting method.
Mark Mordecki, a firefighter with the Farmington Fire Department, explained that the department was having communications problems because the radio frequency bands they were using began filling up with chatter from other agencies. Although some trucks also have mobile data terminals (MDTs) that give incident details to users in electronic form, the units go down at times. So the department looked into technology that would push 911 call data to responders’ cellphones. The technology initially was seen as a backup system. But the idea quickly found favor among paid and volunteer fire crews because they no longer would have to carry pagers or radios and instead could respond via text that they are responding to a call. “It’s a godsend for them, because they didn’t have this capability before,” Mordecki said. “They didn’t give radios to everybody, they just gave pagers. And at night, alarms don’t go off. They just get a text message.” The call-to-text system essentially is automated. A 911 call goes into a countywide 911 center, and as the operator is finished typing the call into the record, the information is sent as a text file into a server that every few seconds gets pinged by the fire department’s network, looking for new data.
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