Cookeville FD Dispatch Adjustment Sees Positive Change For Members

Cookeville Fire Department is seeing a positive change after adjusting its dispatching protocols.

Interim Fire Chief Benton Young said that stations will now be individually paged when dispatch calls come in. He said that previously, all calls would go through to each of the four stations.

“Most people don’t realize we have speakers in the bedrooms, in the bathrooms, in the main day room, the kitchen,” Young said. “Beforehand, before we committed to this, when the pagers go off it goes off at every station, at every room. So lack of sleep, exhaustion, causes safety issues. So it was just a win-win.”

Young said that the department used to do station paging to some degree about 20 years ago. In now running a medical response vehicle that gets paged more than the engines do, he said this is better for the mental and physical health of his firefighters.

Young said that as a member of the department he’s had the idea for some time. Once he became interim chief, Young said that was one of his goals to get this change implemented.

“Being on shift here for 26 years, I knew what a big deal that was to get that completed,” Young said. “Just from being that guy that got woken up 10 times a night and a lot of times it wasn’t even our call.”

Young said that change has been implemented for about a month. He said the work was completed with the help of Putnam 911 Assistant Director Brandan Smith and the fire department’s Zach Womack and has been well-received by firefighters.