The responsiveness of the Easton Volunteer Fire Department and the work they do is exceptional. Although I’ve not timed them, I’d be willing to bet engines are moving out the doors in less than 5 minutes. A truly remarkable feat for a volunteer department. We need to support these volunteers who put their lives at risk every time they answer the call, page, or alarm.
According to the Talbot County Department of Emergency Services, the EVFD was alerted to 273 fire alarms in 2017 and 343 fire alarms in 2018. In the same years, the legitimate alarms were 17 and 20 respectively. All the other alarms were false. Fortunately, the Center was able to cancel some alarms before the EVFD equipment was dispatched. In 2018 the 911 Center cancelled 13 alarms. Thus, the volunteers responded to 310 false alarms.
We’ve all seen the rapid response of the EVFD. In many cases we don’t because some alarms go off during the night. How would you react to jumping out of bed, driving to the station, putting on the 40 to 50 pounds of equipment, getting on the fire truck, and driving to the source of the alarm and find there’s nothing for you to do. Now do this 310 times. That has to take a toll on the volunteers. There’s also an impact to the equipment, including the gear the volunteers wear, the engines and trucks, and fuel expense. Most importantly, false alarms put our volunteers at risk when driving to the station or on the equipment going to a false alarm location.
Some of the alarms are cancelled before the volunteers arrive on the scene, but the wasting of resources has already happened. Our volunteers have already been put at risk. I think we need to focus some attention to eliminating these false alarms before they get to the Center. Several other towns and counties have corrected this situation and reduced false fire alarms by over 50%.
Since all the fire departments in Talbot County support each other, this is not just an Easton issue. The Center received 1,586 alarms in 2018 for all of Talbot County. 190 of these alarms were legitimate or cancelled by the Center before equipment was dispatched. Thus, 1,396 alarms had equipment rolling in the county for no valid reason.
Other towns and counties in Maryland have drastically reduced false fire alarms and we should be able to do it too.
Talbot Bone
Easton
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