The seed for establishing a " Central Alarm System " was planted in 1952 by the Town of Babylon Fire Departments. Each Fire Department was being dispatched by other various agencies. Babylon Village was being dispatched from the Police Sub Station, Wyandanch was being dispatched from Fairchild Republic, Copiague was dispatched by Massapequa Answering Service, several departments were being dispatched by the Town Police.
Suffolk County was venturing into establishing a "Suffolk County Police Department" and let it be known they would no longer want this responsibility.
The Fire Departments formed a committee on February 25, 1960 to investigate a "Central Alarm System" . In January 1961 the commitment to a "Central Alarm System" was made by Lindenhurst, Deer Park, West Babylon and North Lindenhurst Fire Departments. Over the next year representatives from each of these departments met to complete the working details. They met with then Town of Babylon Supervisor "Arthur M. Cromarty", a town resolution was later passed providing space in the Town Hall basement to house "Babylon Central Fire Alarm".
It was determined that the committee would be responsible for the equipment, but that the provision for dispatchers would be met by attaining the service of a private contractor, "John Loll Enterprises".
John Loll began training his staff at Babylon Central Fire Alarm on July 15, 1962. The official start up of dispatching services was August 15, 1962.
As the years passed the other Town of Babylon agencies joined Babylon Central Fire Alarm. Wyandanch Fire Company in February 1963, Babylon Fire Department in June 1970, North Amityville Fire Company in July 1970, North Babylon Fire Company in October 1974, Copiague Fire Department in December 1975 and Wyandanch Wheatley Heights Ambulance Corp in May 1997.
As our membership has grown so have our call intake and responsibilities. Providing the best service possible to our community has always been at the forefront.
Documentation of the office activities were originally done in pen and ink at our inception. Red ink was used to document alarm, blue ink was to document non-emergency tasks.
In consideration of our increased responsibilities and staffing the committee decided to incorporate in 1978 and hire their staff directly. We became "Babylon Central Fire Alarm and Rescue Corporation". At the time we incorporated, we were still using a PBX Switchboard and were in a very small room.
Recognizing the need to modernize and possibly computerize we began taking the strides forward to do so.
I. POWER
a. BCFA is a 24 hours emergency office therefore electrical power is vital. The office has electrical power supplied by a UPS System. The UPS System is a room full of special batteries that power our office at all times. LIPA power charges the batteries, therefore if there were a power failure we would not lose power. Our office would remain powered until an alternate source of power was made available. We can also be powered by a generator and or local fire department heavy rescue units.
II. Telephones.
a. Telephone System with caller ID at each position
b. Caller ID prints for back up
c. Has it’s own battery back up
d. Interagency communication
e. Back up telephones bypass the telephone system and are directly wired to NYNEX equipment, in case the telephone system should fail.
f. 8 answering positions plus 6 direct line positions.
g. TTY for communications with the hearing impaired.
III. Radios
a. Duplication of radio communication equipment, antennae’s
b. frequencies
c. headsets
IV. Consoles
a. Each console is independent of the other
b. set up for 2 person operation
c. 2 CADS screens per position
d. PC access with back up system
e. Back up Card System
V. Back up Station
a. Our back up station is located at the North Lindenhurst Fire Dept. In case of an emergency where we have to evacuate the building we would relocate to NLFD.
VI. Storm Situations
a. We are equipped to have 6 dispatchers on duty at the same time. In the case of a storm we would call in extra dispatchers to man these extra positions.
b. Every time there is a Tropical storm brewing in the Atlantic we track it from it’s inception on our Hurricane Tracking System that is kept in our back up computer system. In case a hurricane or storm should have a path in our direction we prepare accordingly.
c. There are a lot of storms that we handle through out the year, so we are well prepared for these situations.
VII. Emergency Medical Dispatching
a. Each dispatcher is certified in emergency medical dispatching.
b. Every call received through our system we handle as if they were a true emergency.
c. We have the capability to give any medical instructions over the phone such as Cardiac arrest, fractured bones, bleeding, seizures, etc.
VIII. Priority Dispatching
a. In the event we receive a true emergency such as cardiac arrest, difficulty breathing, we would dispatch an ambulance that handles that district and if there is an ambulance that is on there way home from the hospital we would also dispatch them to that address also. This is to ensure proper response time to a true emergency call.