St. Augustine, Fla. — Some Northeast Florida fire departments are getting rid of the emergency alarm systems inside their fire stations to save firefighters from stress.
The St. Augustine Fire Department is one of them, which first started using the EaseAlert system about two years ago and intends to get more tools from the company within the next 3-4 months.
St. Augustine Fire Chief Carlos Aviles tells Action News Jax EaseAlert is a company started by a former Flagler College student, designed to provide fire stations with other ways of alerting firefighters to emergencies that may be less jarring than a loud emergency alarm in the middle of the night.
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The company’s website says it provides things like hallway and bunk lights, smartwatches that vibrate when emergency calls come in, and vibrating attachments for firefighter bunk beds.
“Over the span of a long career, the emergency alarms could have some negative impacts on your health and overall safety,” Aviles said.
The St. Augustine Fire Department has already implemented a new system of red LED lights in the bunk rooms of its fire stations, which light up by firefighters’ beds when the station gets an alarm as a softer way of getting them awake compared to alarms from the PA system.
“This is one way to make sure the entire station’s not being woken by an emergency call,” said Aviles, “It would just be the crews that are assigned to the call that would be woken up.”
Aviles said there are some nights when the PA system blares emergency alarms 3-4 times in a night, which he said can impact firefighters’ readiness to respond to emergencies while they’re in the middle of a 24-hour-long shift. EaseAlert claims its system can improve firefighters’ health by 169% compared to the use of typical emergency alarms.
But no matter how much the system may help firefighters’ health, Aviles hopes it will keep his team prepared and alert at the sound of the alarm.
“If there’s a way where we can maintain the level of readiness but positively impact their overall health and safety, then that’s certainly something we should be doing,” said Aviles.
Action News Jax reached out to other fire departments around Northeast Florida to see which ones may be utilizing the EaseAlert system at their stations. The city of Fernandina Beach says it is using it, but Columbia County and Clay County Fire Rescue say they are not.
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