City of Sandusky Fire Department
Sandusky Fire Department Deploys SARA for Mass Notification to Support Emergency Management
Description
The Sandusky Fire Department serves more than 29,000 permanent residents for 14.7 square miles. It is the largest fire department in Erie County with 58 career firefighters responding from three stations with an ISO rating of 4.
Opportunity
Anticipating reductions in staff and increased communication costs, the City of Sandusky, Ohio, needed to develop a new platform for inter-departmental communications. Because personal messaging is an integral part of the Fire Division's daily operations, this change would have significant impact. Seeking to find a city-wide solution, department supervisors and the IT specialist researched systems to best meet Sandusky’s needs.
After meeting with Status Solutions, Sandusky realized that the Situational Awareness and Response Assistant (SARA) solution would meet its parameters of affordability, service, expandability and – above all – usability. Work then began to configure and install SARA for mass notification through the city's fiber optic network.
Solution
SARA uses cell phones, home phones, pagers, email, two-way radios and public address systems to send alerts and campaign-style messages to employees. Because the solution can send both voice and text messages, the Sandusky Fire Department can use SARA to contact employees individually or as functional groups.The the department has created alert groups, including the dive team, hazmat team, rope team, officers, paramedics, firefighters, to meet its specific call-in needs. In addition to alerting personnel to respond to an emergency, the department also can use SARA to generate messages for outside individuals and groups. These include city commissioners, department heads and media, etc.
According to Fire Chief Paul Ricci, the SARA solution for mass notification was installed at a fraction of the cost of the department's previous paging system. And modifications to the alerting process can be made easily thanks to SARA's flexible design.
Partnership
Between May and October, an additional 30,000 to 50,000 people are added to the city's population as they visit the Cedar Point Amusement Park, one of the world's largest. Therefore, efficient mass notifiction becomes even more critical to the Sandusky Fire Department's emergency management efforts.
The uniqueness of the SARA system provides for a campaign-style message that can be answered by the individual, sent to voicemail or email, or left on an answering machine. SARA also provides for repeat messaging, and a message can be broadcast to one individual or many employees simultaneoulsy.
