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STERLING HEIGHTS — The Sterling Heights Fire Department recently unveiled two new initiatives aimed at improving emergency response times and public safety.
“The focus of both of these initiatives is to improve the response capabilities of the Fire Department and deal with the ever-increasing emergency calls that we’re seeing across our city,” Fire Chief Kevin Edmond said. “Our department wants to ensure that we send the right resources at the right time to emergencies.”
The two initiatives — a peak demand unit with two basic life-support ambulances, and medical priority dispatching — were unveiled during a press conference Oct. 7.
The peak demand unit is staffed by four newly-hired EMT firefighters and will operate 10 hours a day, Tuesday through Friday, to free up advanced life support paramedic rigs for more severe calls.
The second initiative, the city’s new medical priority dispatching system, implements a color-coded system coordinated with Macomb County’s COMTEC communications and technology center to ensure the right resources are deployed to each 911 call.
The caller’s code is determined by questions asked by the dispatcher who answers the call.
In the first 39 days of the program being active, Edmond said the unit had responded to 39 calls, or 8% of the total number of calls since then.
Sterling Heights Mayor Michael Taylor said a commitment to public safety has always been one of his top priorities.
“Everything that we do in terms of our park developments, our new trails, the public art that we do, the quality-of-life initiatives, could not be made possible if we did not have a safe city and we did not prioritize the safety or our residents,” he said.
Taylor said the service is one of many examples of how the Fire Department is proactive and progressive and constantly looking for ways to improve their skills and better serve the residents.
“This is going to provide better service to our residents and the visitors and the people who work in the city of Sterling Heights, and it’s going to make sure that during the most critical times of the day that we have extra staffing to address those needs,” he said.
Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel commended the city for its new initiatives.
“What Sterling Heights came up with is something that’s going to be utilized not just with Sterling Heights, but throughout the entire county,” he said.
According to Angela Elsey, Macomb County’s dispatch director, the programs cost the county nothing except an amount to install new technology, which she said cost less than $10,000.
