Welcome to Babylon Central Fire Alarm
Babylon Central Fire Alarm was founded in 1962. Since that time we have grown to handle 9 town fire departments and 1 community ambulance corp. The fire departments that make up Babylon Central Fire Alarm have made a commitment to provide their communities with the finest services available. Their progressive ideas and dedication provide services that are second to none.
Babylon Central Fire Alarm (BCFA) provides emergency services dispatching for the residents of the Town of Babylon and also receives many calls every year dealing with non-emergency situations such as flooded basements, cats in trees and general information on fire safety. All calls, including non-emergency calls are handled by our staff with the thought that we are here to help resolve problems. Over the years we have acquired a vast wealth of information on where to go to get things done, even over the weekend or late at night. This information is available to our residents every day of the year.
This year we will be handling about 16,000 emergency calls. These include calls for medical emergencies and also fire department responses. All of our dispatchers are fully trained and certified in Emergency Medical Dispatch. This allows all of our staff to give assistance to callers before the arrival of an ambulance. We are able to give instructions for any medical problem from stomach pains and backaches to heart attacks and child birth. This allows the callers to render assistance to the patient until help arrives, possibly saving a life or reducing the level of injury.
All calls received are dispatched with the help of our Computer Aided Dispatch System (CADS). Our CADS system has entries for EVERY parcel in the town. Every building in the town has a data base that when accessed will provide the nearest cross streets, hydrant locations and geographic notes needed to assist the responding units to arrive promptly. We can also enter data that is helpful for us, such as if invalids are present and their location in the building. In commercial buiildings we have notes on hazardous materials and type of construction. This information can then be passed on to the responding units so they can be better prepared upon arrival.
BCFA currently receives about half of our emergency calls through the Suffolk County Police Enhanced 911 System. We are designated PSAP (public safety answering point) which means that anyone in our jurisdiction who does dial 911 instead of our seven digit number will be connected to our center as well. This avoids any time delay in responding to the public’s need for emergency assistance. We serve as the answering point for East Farmingdale Fire Department for the enhanced 911 system in addition to those within our membership. We feel this is one of the most important advances in recent history.
Our dispatch center, newly renovated and updated with the help of Supervisor Richard Schaffer and the Town of Babylon, has added the ability to offer more services to our residents. We now have 3 dipatch positions and an additional answering position to field incoming calls. The addition of a new 800mhz SCPD radio allows us to stay in constant touch with the police, even when our other systems fail,as shown recently during an outage of phone equipment at police headquarters. With this radio and also a direct telephone link to the First Precinct we were able to take calls for the Suffolk County Police and relay the information directly to the SCPD dispatcher or the First Precinct as needed.
Our office has back up systems for all equipment. Power , telephones and radios are all provided with back up systems if a power loss or equipment failure causes the primary system to be unavailable. Multiple power systems and dual telephone and radio systems keep us on line during any situation.
As you can see we are a state of the art facility. Through the use of modern technology and old fashioned dedication we provide a level of service to the residents of the Town of Babylon that is beyond compare on Long Island.