The Newport News Fire Department are improving response times with data-driven tech, which they hope will help them in turn to save lives.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The City of Newport News is using new data-driven technology to be able to be more prepared when responding to incidents.
13News Now got an inside look at how the Newport News Fire Department is rolling it out.
The Newport News Fire Chief, Wesley Rogers, told 13News Now they pull Census and American Community Survey data to improve how their crews respond in a crisis.
Rogers said, knowing more about the situation they are walking into can mean the difference between life and death. The Newport News Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Team pulls that data to inform crews in the field.
“It gives us that opportunity to analyze that data, to figure out what we can do better, how we can respond better,” said Rogers.
The technology includes where at-risk populations live, what help a person might need, and it’s all things that firefighters can access while en route to a call.
“Some of them might have an aging population that receives more medical calls, so we might see fire calls that are at higher intensity in some areas,” said Rogers.
He said their crews are often rushing into smoke-filled, crumbling structures, so knowing ahead of time what they’re dealing with can give them a leg up.
“Take each structure, evaluate some criteria about it, be able to grade it as a level of risk, and then put it on a map, to see how many of those risk structures we have here in the city,” said Rogers.
The technology is also being used by the city’s emergency preparedness team for before a disaster, but also, to be prepared for if and when disaster strikes. In instances like those, they can know who needs assistance quickly.
“Now that we know that, we can plan that during blue sky days, it’s nice and sunny, we’ve got plenty of time to plan for it, and when the tropical system is 3 to 4 days out, we’re not scrambling,” said John Northon, the emergency preparedness manager for the City of Newport News.
It’s improving response times to hopefully reach more of Newport News faster.
“It’s a wealth of information, to be able to pull together and extract things, to help better your response, and make us better at what we do,” said Rogers.
Rogers said the data has even shown them where a new fire station will be needed, in Menchville in the near future.
The Newport News Emergency Preparedness Team said they have already used this technology to more quickly open a shelter during a snowstorm earlier this year.
