When it comes to emergency response, organization is often key.
In the past year, fire agencies across Monterey County have been adopting a new way of organizing their incident response.
Tablet Command is an app that streamlines the process of emergency response, allowing agencies to respond to incidents faster and with better coordination.
The app compiles heaps of information necessary for responding to emergencies all onto one interface, something Greg Greenlee, Acting Assistant Fire Chief for Monterey Fire Department, which adopted the software last July, said it “is helpful every single day.”
Greenlee said the app allows him and his team members to see a real time map of an incident, helping them to quickly navigate, locate access points and coordinate across agencies.
“I’m able to see on a map where all my resources are responding from and also see where they physically are parking when they get to the incident,” Greenlee said.
The app also allows emergency responders to access other useful resources like traffic cameras, inter-agency priority lists and reference materials for hazmat response.
The app was first thought up in 2010 by Andy Bozzo and Will Pigeon, two firefighters in Contra Costa County. Bozzo, who is originally from Carmel, got the idea for Tablet Command’s format while playing Words With Friends, an online spelling game similar to scrabble.
Tablet Command essentially makes the emergency resources into moveable letter tiles from the game, Greenlee said.
“We used to track everyone using a whiteboard and velcro tags,” Greenlee said. “Tablet Command turns that into basically that Words with Friends display where now my engine company is a tile and I can push and I can drag and I can move them around.”
“I can put them on a map … and sort them based on who they’re working for, what tasks they’re doing or what their assignment is based on the incident,” said Greenlee.
Since its first usage by Stockton Fire Department in 2013, Tablet Command has spread to more than 1,500 agencies across the United States and Canada.
Despite its invention by a man from Carmel however, Tablet Command was only adopted by agencies in Monterey County this year due in part to the initial cost of integrating the software with existing computers.
Its adoption in Monterey County however, is now widespread, with it being used by Monterey Fire, Salinas Fire, Seaside Fire, Monterey County Regional Fire, North County Fire, Marina Fire and Greenfield Fire.
“Every agency does it a little differently but for Monterey, all of our fire engines, our fire truck, all of our chief officers, our ambulance and our airport crash vehicle all have a tablet in their vehicle 24/7 ready to go,” Greenlee said.
In addition to this, every firefighter has access to the Tablet Command app on their phone, allowing them to see what’s happening with an incident in real time.
According to Greenlee, the app’s instant notification system allows his team to see an incident as soon as dispatch assigns a unit, which he estimated is oftentimes thirty to sixty seconds before dispatch radios them.
“We see on a daily basis where we have engine companies that can actually be on their way out to the engine, to get on the engine to go on a call before they’re even dispatched because they’re using the notification feature in Tablet Command,” Greenlee said.
“That means that we’re getting the engine out the door, to that person calling 911 thirty to sixty seconds faster … in that aspect, every single call its a benefit for us.”
