nfpa standards for dispatchers

[buca18]

What nfpa standard states the number of dispatchers needed?? we do about 4000 calls a year and our dispatch frequently operates with only one dispatcher who also dispatches for the police at the same time.

[nmfire]

I happen to have NFPA 1221 right in front of me.

For your reference, the word "Alarm" in this NFPA section means "the indication or report of a fire" (ie- a person calling 9-1-1, the report from an alarm company, or a city pull box). Alarm does NOT mean you getting paged out.

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NFPA 1221
Section 4-3: Staffing

(1) In juresdictions recieving more than 730 or more alarms a year, at least one telecommunicator shall be on duty at the communications center.

(2) Ninty-Five Percent of alarms shall be answered within 30 seconds and in NO case shall the initial call-takers response to and alarm exceed 60 seconds.

(3) The dispatch of the emergency response agency shall be completed within 60 seconds of the completed recipt of an emergency alarm.

(4) Communication centers that provide emergency medical dispatching (EMD) protocols shall have TWO telecommunicators on at ALL times.
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There is nothing in the code about integrated Police/Fire dispatch. In my opinion, this is a hard thing to set in stone. The call volume and type of calls for the PD will effect your fire communications and the NFPA code just can't account for that many variables. Our town is a combined Police/Fire and I WISH, they were seperate. The PD runs it and of course only puts on duty what is required at a minimum for them. This screws us when the PD is busy and so are we. Actually, it screws everyone including the over-burdoned dispatcher.

[DualReverse]

Funny thing- we were talking about 1221 just the other day, and I'm working on a graduate paper for 1600, which deals more with emergency management.

Please keep us informed on how you make out- I'd be interested to see how you fare...