By Victoria Lee, FirstNet Consultation Advisor, Western Area
Last month, members of the FirstNet team had the opportunity to attend the Metropolitan “Metro” Fire Chiefs Association 2016 annual conference in Long Beach, California. The Metro Fire Chiefs Association is a Section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) and National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). It brings together fire chiefs from large metropolitan fire departments to share information and focus on major issues affecting policy changes in the U.S. and abroad.
Approximately 120 Metro chiefs from Australia, Canada, China, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States attended the conference, where they elected the Section’s 2016-2017 officers and board members. The conference also featured a comprehensive education program included updates and presentations on numerous topics, such as Diversity in Hiring and Promotions, Succession Planning, Fire Dynamics and the Importance of Pre-Incident Planning, Disaster Recovery and Educational Initiatives, Labor Management Alliance, Big Data, Civil Unrest, Explosives Training and Research. Many of these topics had themes related to the importance of and access to data by fire service personnel.
One of the most notable presentations was given by Kristina Anderson, who was shot during the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting and survived. As she shared her compelling story, I was reminded that this happened before the proliferation of smartphones and social media. Now the students would be have access to more capabilities to alert friends, family, and emergency response agencies via text and social media as the event was unfolding.
I also considered how the public safety response to an emergency like this could be very different with the FirstNet network – location based services and apps could help find the students within the building and law enforcement officials could have body cameras to relay video of the injured students to paramedics and hospitals, just to name a couple of examples.
Kristina discussed how she is focused on encouraging joint pre-planning by all public safety disciplines to improve the response to and effectively mitigate active shooter incidents. She has also developed a mobile application designed to improve public safety and awareness at college campuses.
Kristina – Thank you for your courage in sharing your story. At FirstNet, we are working to ensure the deployment of a network that will help you achieve your goal.
-Vicki
