Berthoud Fire Protection District, Estes Valley Fire Protection District, Loveland Fire Rescue Authority, Poudre Fire Authority, and Wellington Fire Protection District have signed an Interagency Governmental Agreement to begin “Closest Unit Dispatching” throughout Larimer County. The program started Tuesday, September 15.
Closest Unit Dispatching consists of a dispatching system that displays to 911 dispatchers at all available emergency fire department vehicles utilizing GPS location. The dispatching system then dispatches the nearest unit to an emergency, regardless of jurisdiction.
Fire officials with these five agencies have worked over the course of a year with Larimer County Emergency Temphone Authority (LETA-911), Estes Park Emergency Communications Center, Fort Collins 911, and Loveland Emergency Communications Center to create a model in responding to emergency fire and EMS calls so that response times are improved and response recourses are shared.
Residents within Berthoud Fire Protection District (BFPD), Loveland Fire Rescue Authority (LFRA) and Wellington Fire Protection District (WFPD) response areas have already seen changes associated with the closest unit dispatching. The five fire agencies involved have renumbered and renamed their available units in order to display the available resources in dispatch software.
Dispatching agencies within Larimer County have updated to new software and servers to facilitate this new implementation, involving joint training across the agencies as well as aligning technical terminology for cohesive incident communications. The emergency agencies involved will operate independently.
All of the fire service’s administration and day-to-day business functions will operate and serve their communities independently, with combined efforts working to improve capabilities to better serve the residents and visitors of the communities.
For more information regarding the signed Interagency Governmental Agreement, visit: https://www.poudre-fire.org/Home/Components/News/News/371/17