Coordinating chaos: How Ottawa fire’s dispatch team handles multiple emergencies

One mid-February evening, as thick snowflakes blanketed the nation’s capital, crews contained back-to-back house fires that were about 13 kilometres apart.

At around 9:40 p.m. firefighters were told to respond to a multi-unit home on Bronson Avenue where “heavy black smoke” was pouring out. Within eight minutes, the Ottawa Fire Service’s (OFS) communication division received calls for a garage fire just east of downtown.

Not only did the weather make the job hard, but situations like these demand quick, immediate action from the communications division who control which trucks move where in the city and ensures all stations are “covered-off.”

Being covered off means that if another call was received in relatively the same area, other stations can respond with the same speed and efficiency as usual.

“We just try to manage having enough resources in each area, they’re going to be spread a little bit more thin in those areas, but we do still have coverage,” Katie Clattenburg, communications supervisor in the OFS dispatch centre, told CityNews.

What played out on Feb. 12

“What a nightmare,” Clattenburg said looking at the call logs for that night. She was not working that evening but said the team likely pulled fire trucks from south, west and east to cover off the gaps.

Anytime there is a house fire, six pump trucks attend the scene, and while they do, it leaves gaps for how long it would take for a fire truck to reach another area in the event they were needed.

Clattenburg’s, and other communication supervisors on the other three platoons, jobs are to look at the map listing all the stations in the nearby area and pull crews so each section of the city has coverage. She is also responsible for making sure specialized vehicles, like ladder trucks, are in the cover-off zones.

That night in February was one of the service’s “textbook worst case scenarios.”

Due to the proximity of the fires, staff needed to pull fleets from across the city to make sure the eight stations left open from the incidents were taken care of. From Westboro, to just east of Vanier and from the Ottawa River south to Confederation Heights, fire stations were briefly empty.

The forces’ Blackburn (54) station moved downtown to Preston, a crew near the airport (33) would have “slid” to Brookfield (34), the Knoxdale (25) station might have moved to King Edward and the Jean D’Arc (52) team would have covered off Montreal Road (51).

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“Our other western stations (42, 41 or 46) probably would have covered in the Glebe or Alta Vista. So that would have been eight truck movements for that to maintain coverage,” Clattenburg said.

Truck movements that would be set in motion as soon as the incidents were called in and as quickly as responding to any other situation.

When there is one working fire at a time — “normal circumstances” — and if it’s in one of the city’s populated areas, it’s just a matter of moving two or three trucks.

Some stations are ‘vacant’ but still covered

Incidents in the rural parts of the city where there are no hydrants available can use a lot of resources from the department. This is because crews need to coordinate a tanker rotation to grab water from a nearby source to consistently douse the flames.

There are at times, while crews are out tackling a fire, stations across the city that are vacant. However, Clattenburg stresses that this is not for an extended period of time and does not mean areas are being underserved.

Another part of the dispatch centre is ensuring that a truck stays on scene to “babysit” a fire making sure there are no flare-ups, the “unglamorous” part of the job Clattenburg said.

“No one wants to upset dispatch,” she said laughing. “A lot of them that’ll come by and have a quick tour and bring us treats so that they stay on our good side.”

Emergency responders are called under sometimes horrific circumstances, and some incidents can impact them like anyone else. Clattenburg said she tries to keep this in mind when moving the fleet back to the station.

“They’re all hard calls to deal with, but there are some that hit a little bit differently,” she said. “Then we would put them out of service, and I would call the chief and just say, ‘Hey, this truck just went to this call. Maybe check on them to make sure they’re all doing okay.'”

While making this decision, she has to make sure that the station is covered-off, all while supporting her own team members and taking calls.

The job is not one Clattenburg ever dreamed of, she says it was “merely by fluke” she started at the department after working for the city for over two decades.

“I have family in the fire department, so it was kind of like maintaining the family legacy of working for fire,” she said.