Lethbridge’s Public Safety Communications Centre begins dispatch for Blood Tribe Emergency Services

Blood Tribe Emergency Services is switching to co-ordinating responses through Lethbridge's Public Safety Communications Centre.

A new partnership will see fire dispatch services for Blood Tribe Emergency Services (BTES) provided through Lethbridge’s Public Safety Communications Centre (PSCC).

“We want to provide the highest level of service for Blood Tribe members that we can, and this is just another one of the steps we’ve taken forward,” said BTES fire chief Travis Coleman.

The collaboration strengthens the relationship between the Blood Tribe and Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services (LFES) to provide support and assistance where needed.

Prior to the change in dispatching, Coleman says the department used cellphones as a means of communication.

“We’d get calls to the fire hall, or if they did call 911, lots of times, the dispatchers would just call us with a courtesy call, so we had a cellphone for our firefighters,” explained Coleman.

“They’d use the cellphone and answer it, and then they would call the captain on duty or myself, and we’d just try to use cellphones.”

While residents will still call 911 in emergency situations, the calls will be taken at the PSCC, with all BTES crews communicating with dispatchers and one another through radios.

“We have full radio dispatchers; we’re all interlinked,” said Coleman.

“We can talk to our mutual aid partners.

“If the Coalhurst Fire Department is assisting us up in the north end or Lethbridge, if it’s down in the south—whether it’s Cardston County or Fort Macleod—everybody is on the radio systems, so we can now all respond and communicate together.”

Coleman says the change will ultimately improve response times for crews.

“We have had times where a cellphone call got missed because we’re busy on a call,” he said.

“We’d be at a structure fire and another call would come in, so we’d be on the cellphone trying to organize teams and get mutual aid partners to come in and fight that fire or go to that medical call, so this is going to be way quicker.”

BTES has created a system with each home and business receiving a specific address for emergency crews to respond to across the reserve.

“Having someone on the other end of that line when you’re calling 911—they’re there to speak to that resident until emergency services get on scene to reassure, provide support, gather more information to pass to the responders as they’re heading there. That wasn’t available before,” said Kevin McKeown, LFES deputy chief of communications and strategy.

The PSCC handles around 140,000 emergency calls annually for 22 agencies across southwestern Alberta.

“Our PSCC is able to use and leverage the technology that we have as far as mapping, data, stats. …All sorts of different tracking that we can offer through our centre will only help improve emergency response for the Blood Tribe,” said McKeown.

The department of 65 members began working with the PSCC last year to establish dispatching, along with improvements made by Telus for phone lines across the reserve.

BTES responds to roughly 4,000 EMS calls and 500 fire-related calls each year.

“It just makes it strong as far as our response time, locations on our nation and just that co-ordination—makes it so key, and we know time is of the essence as far as when we’re saving lives,” said Derrick Fox, Blood Tribe Department of Health CEO.

“It just strengthens what we do with emergency services and the safety of our community.”