The 384-Kbps network links a central fire station and two small fire stations to a building housing the city's Town Hall and Police Department, Sanford information systems director Rich Casselberry said. Fire stations use the system to access dispatch and vehicle maintenance information from Unix databases in the building. As the Police Department radios emergency calls to the fire stations, it documents dispatch information in an Informix Workgroup Server 5.10.UC1 database, Casselberry said.
Firefighters check the data after a call to evaluate factors such as response time.
Firefighters access a similar Town Hall database for vehicle maintenance data, which resides on a 166-MHz Pentium server. Dispatch data resides on a 333-MHz Pentium II server. Calif. Previously, the town paid a monthly fee to link the central fire station to the databases via Integrated Services Digital Network lines. The small stations had to tie up their single phone lines using dial-up modem software to access the information. Now the stations connect for free over a couple of unused lines in the town's 25-pair copper fire alarm circuitry, he said.