The Dallas Fire-Rescue Alarm Office answers, processes, and dispatches all Fire-Rescue related calls for Fire and Medical emergency services. The Fire Alarm Office processes over 300,000 calls for combined emergency service. In addition to Fire and EMS calls, the alarm office also handled over 25,000 additional calls for service of a non-emergency nature. All calls are processed using nationally accepted standards for dispatching.

Personnel assigned to the alarm office are trained and certified as Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMD) and Emergency Fire Dispatchers using the system known as the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS). The EMD’s provide life saving Post-Dispatch and Pre-Arrival instructions to the emergency caller. All EMD’s are required to maintain their certification by continuous training, education, and meeting ongoing performance standards. A Quality Assurance Coordinator is in place to oversee EMD performance and compliance to standards through case review, data collection, and training.

Fire Station Alerting is an integral part of dispatching Fire-Rescue units to emergency incidents. This system uses computers and radio frequencies to send alert tones to the Fire Stations. The computers are located in the Alarm Office where the CAD selects the units or stations to be alerted. Once selected, the alert command is then sent to a processor that in turn sends it through a radio over the airwaves to be received by the Fire Stations. The Fire Station equipment then activates the alerting tones through speakers throughout the Station.

In addition to handling emergency calls, the Alarm Office is responsible for all radio communications on all the main dispatching channels that involve operational units. As part of the dispatch function, operators are charged with responsibility to verify the response and arrival of emergency units to incident scenes. CAD Incident Information, Fire Station Alerting, Fire-Rescue Unit status, hospital status, Inter-Agency requests, are provided by Alarm Office personnel.

All radio and pager equipment for the Department of Fire-Rescue is issued and maintained through the Communications & Technology Bureau by the Communications Technical Coordinator. Radio configurations, channel designations, equipment distribution, repair and replacements, research and evaluation.