By Alison Ecklund

In order to keep emergency response times down, the Sedona Fire District’s regional dispatch center will get a new computer-aided dispatching system .

SFD will purchase a new CAD system from PSSI for $496,218 and Dell computers for $6,098.93.

SFD will pay the total, $502,316.93, from the revenue collected last year and revenue brought in from assisting in wildland fires, SFD Fire Chief Bill Boler said.

The dispatch center’s current 10-year-old CAD system is not working 100 percent, Jeff Jennings, communication specialist supervisor, told the governing board.

Anyone with a 10-year-old computer can imagine how outdated the system is, he said.

Dispatch’s goal is to notify emergency crews within 30 seconds, something they depend on the computer system to help them with.

If the system is down, response times lengthen.

CAD systems display the caller’s name and address on one screen and show the caller’s location on a map, giving longitude and latitude on another.

The system automatically finds the emergency crew closest to the call and keeps a list of which crews are out and which can be used for backup, if needed.

In September 2007, the system was down for six days. Dispatchers had to use pencil and paper, lengthening dispatch times to 90 seconds from 30 seconds.

In July of this year, the system was down again, causing dispatchers to revert to pencil and paper. Now they leave the paper near the phones, just in case the system goes down again.

“There’s a purpose to this I can’t explain,” Boler said. “You won’t understand it until you have a pain in your left side, and suddenly time becomes an issue.”

SFD’s dispatch center is regional, dispatching for Black Canyon City, Camp Verde, Clarkdale, Cottonwood, Jerome, Mayer, Montezuma/Rimrock, Pinewood, Verde Valley Ambulance and Verde Valley Fire, as well as Sedona.

On July 23, the governing board approved adding the Yavapai-Apache Nation to

the list.

In fiscal year 2008-09, SFD received $725,556 from the participating agencies in recovery fees.

But the regional agencies won’t be required to help with costs for the new CAD. When SFD started dispatching regionally, it decided to retain ownership of all capital items, Terry Schleizer, regional communications manager, said.

Whether SFD was dispatching regionally or just for its own district, SFD has enough business that the center would need to have a CAD, Jennings said.

On an average, the center receives 150 to 200 calls a day, but during the Brins Fire, in June 2006, it received 1,200 calls from 11 a.m. to midnight.

“We need something that can handle not only when we’re slow,” Jennings said. “Reliable hardware in communication centers is imperative. We’re currently being prepared to run on paper and pencil at any time. We don’t know when it will fail; we just know it will.”

Alison Ecklund can be reached at  282-7795, Ext. 125, or e-mail

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