The Newport News Department of Newport is improving response times with data -based technology, which expect them to help them save lives.
Newport News, VA.-The city of Newport News is using a new data-based technology to be more prepared when responding to incidents.
13News now had an internal look of how the Newport News Department is throwing it.
Newport News Chief of Firefighters, Wesley Rogers, told 13News now that they extract data from surveys from the American community and the American community to improve the way in which their crews respond in a crisis.
Rogers said that knowing more about the situation they are entering can mean the difference between life and death. The Newport News Geographic Information Systems (GIS) equipment extracts that data to inform the equipment in the field.
“It gives us the opportunity to analyze that data, to discover what can do better, how we can respond better,” Rogers said.
Technology includes where populations at risk live, what helps a person may need, and it is all that firefighters can access while addressing a call.
“Some of them could have a population that ages that it receives more calls, so we could see fire calls that have a greater intensity in some areas,” Rogers said.
He said that their crews often rush to smoke -filled structures and fall apart, so knowing in advance with what they face can give them an advantage.
“Take each structure, evaluate some criteria in this regard, can qualify 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,” Rogers said.
Technology is also being used by the city’s emergency preparation equipment for before a disaster, but also, to be prepared for the IF disaster and when. In cases like those, they can know who needs help quickly.
“Now that we know that, we can plan that during the days of Blue Sky, it is pleasant and sunny, we have a lot of time to plan it, and when the tropical system is 3 to 4 days, we are not fighting,” said John Northon, emergency preparation manager of the Newport News city.
It is to improve response times to get to more Newport news faster.
“It is a lot of information, be able to unite and extract things, help improve your answer and improve ourselves in what we do,” Rogers said.
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 preparation team said they have already used this technology to open a more quickly shelter during a snowstorm earlier this year.