Pflugerville Fire Department deploys new alarm system

Pflugerville FD gets new alarm technology

There is new cutting-edge technology that the Pflugerville Fire Department installed to notify its first responders.

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas - There is new cutting-edge technology that the Pflugerville Fire Department installed to notify its first responders. 

The backstory:

The CEO of EaseAlert, Blake Richardson, said he grew up in the firehouse watching his father work as a firefighter for more than 20 years, and that is where he got the idea for the company. 

"I saw the toll that the alerting process can take on a firefighter, being around the firehouse and hearing those alerting tones from the traditional alarms, I could feel it in my heart when I'd hear those tones go off," said Blake Richardson. 

The low-volume system notifies firefighters in place of the loud traditional station alarms, which can be startling. 

"EaseAlert has the opportunity to help firefighters wake up quickly and be in a position that they can respond quicker versus being startled, having time to gather themselves and kind of come to their senses," said Michael Anderson, Deputy Assistant Fire Chief of the Pflugerville Fire Department.

The wireless technology aims to alert without the alarm. 

"Outside of heart attacks being the number one cause of on-duty death, they're up to 14.1 times more likely to die of a heart attack during that alarm response window," said Richardson. 

The tactical pre-alert wristband or dog tag ensures firefighters are notified when a call comes into the station, regardless of their location, as opposed to traditional alerts that notify the building. 

"Some of the crews have liked the wearables because they get notified where they're in portions of the station where they either have too much noise, they can't hear it, but also they don't have to have radios going," said Anderson. 

Their mission is to enhance the heart health of first responders and mitigate the additional stressors associated with emergency dispatch calls.   

"We've seen up to a 21% reduction in response times when we're able to give a pre-alert with our dispatching console," said Richardson.   

According to EaseAlert, it is the first and only firefighter alert system in the world that notifies the responder directly.