Cape Town - As fires blaze in and around Cape Town, the fire and rescue centralised command and control centre in Goodwood has been working tirelessly to make sure the firefighters have everything they need.
The Emergency Policing and Incident Control (Epic) system, which was recently developed, played a hand in assisting the command centre to deal with the recent fires as efficiently as possible.
The command centre began using the Epic system in October last year, while development of the programme started three years ago. They built the system on the Systems Application Product (SAP) platform, and they had an external company come in and develop the programme while making use of the city’s architecture department.
While the technology is still in its early stages, the centre hope to expand and improve it. Integration with other services such as the emergency service is one of their developmental goals for the Epic.
“Over the next couple of years, we are going to be doing a lot of enhancements. This is a basic layer that we have now and we are going to start adding more and more layers. We are looking at involving the neighbourhood watches, citizen apps and contraventions in the system as well,” said Craig Cyster, divisional commander at the command centre.
The Epic system has been developed for nine departments: metro police, law enforcement, traffic services, emergency services, 107, fire and rescue, disaster management, special investigations unity, social development services and the Stompi hotline, which shows where people have been throwing their cigarette butts.
“The system allows the call taker to distribute to multiple organisations; each service will then receive a service request,” Cyster said.
Their response units have tablets which transmit their location to the command centre. The system informs the centre how close the nearest unit is to an incident and the expected time it will take for them to arrive there, as well as who is at the incident - including which unit is there and who is in the unit.
When the units are called to an emergency they are able to check what the emergency is, where it is, if anyone has been injured, what roads are closed, as well as where the nearest water pumps are.
If there are any hazardous materials near to a fire, the unit will be able to see where they is and try to keep the blaze from reaching that area.
The new system has also improved communication with callers as it documents when the person last called and what the call was about.
“When you phone the city and you report an incident, you then get an SMS to say ‘Thank you for calling the Cape Town Emergency Services, your request has been completed’ and you
get a reference number. So if there are any queries, you can go back to that reference number and you can pull up what the incident was about,” said city fire spokesperson Theo Layne.
The centre is in constant communication with the units, from when the first call comes in reporting a fire through to when the blaze has been successfully extinguished.
Cyster described the environment in the centralised command and control centre as “organised chaos”.
“With the recent fires it was hectic really, we ran out of fire engines eventually,” he said.
Cyster is very proud of the dedication of his team in the centre.
“The team behind the firefighters is the control centre. Without the control centre staff doing their job efficiently, we would not be able to manage all of the fires.”
“It is a very high, pressured job. They are essentially the nerve centre of the fire and rescue service department. These guys manage 30 fire stations and they manage all of the resources for the fire stations. Whatever those guys need out there, they get it for them. Come hell or high water, they will source whatever resources those people require.”