FSA involves providing tones and call information to an entire station, which allows everyone to be on the same page and ultimately when this concept was introduced, it dramatically improved the way fire fighters do their job in and around the station, specifically in the 90’s early 2000s with the integration of Computer Aided Dispatch.

This included lights and speakers, and more recently displays. There are many competitors in the space (such as Locution, Motorola, Westnet, and Zetron). Firefighter Alerting is a term that we came up with. This, at its core, goes a level deeper than the fire station and delivers alerts directly to personnel.

Healthy fire fighter alerting revolves around preparing fire fighters in advance of the call with tactile pre-alerts – either through wearables on personnel or devices permanently installed in their sleeping quarters). That is a critical step in the health of the fire fighter, as their cognitive awareness improves, their heart rate and cortisol levels don’t spike as much, and as a result their job performance improves.

They can get ready while call info is coming in rather than being woken up to the tones. Another example would be the Mobile Data Terminals that we install in the apparatus themselves – route and call information is delivered directly to the responding crew. Additionally, it means that red lights are installed around the station for scientifically proven improvement on nighttime quality of life, not just programmed to blast on every time a call comes in, no matter what time of day.

Although lights are found in and around the fire station, I believe that going the extra mile to provide “red lights instead of bright white lights” as a concept directly aligns “Healthy Firefighter Alerting”.