The Less-Alarming Wake-Up

With the economic downturn, it is unclear when funds will be approved for the county to install the system in its 38 fire stations, Fairfax Battalion Chief Dean Cox said. "It's becoming the standard in the Metro area," he said.

Besides a healthier wake-up, the system has other advantages.

It's targeted, so it alerts only the crew needed on a specific call, not everyone in the firehouse. And the computer-activated system is faster, so it shaves important seconds off response time. The firefighters are usually already running toward their vehicles by the time they hear where they're going.

"It might save them 10 to 15 seconds," said Carol Saulnier, Arlington's chief fire marshal. "That might not seem like a lot, but it can really make the difference between life and death."

Arlington's average response time -- from the moment the dispatcher advises the firefighters to the time they get to their destination -- is four minutes, which is better than the national standard. Arlington firefighters and paramedics answered 24,215 emergency calls in 2007; Escobedo's station in Ballston took 5,565 of those calls.

Schwartz gets excited about another feature of the system: the ability of one jurisdiction to directly dispatch firefighters from another. That won't work until everyone is on the same page, though.

"Several times a day already, units from Fairfax run into Arlington to serve our citizens who dial 911 on the west end of Columbia Pike, since the closest unit to a good deal of that portion of Arlington is in Baileys Crossroads," said Schwartz. "When Fairfax comes online with the system, we will be able to alert them from our own dispatch center, which could cut up to a couple minutes off our response time."

Schwartz said that "response time is everything" in the emergency services business. "If you're in cardiac arrest, you need CPR within four minutes," he said.

A few decades ago, volunteer firefighters in many rural communities across the country would be roused from beds in their own homes by loud wailing sirens that would wake up the whole area.

Then came the night-watch method of alert, where firefighters would take turns staying up to answer a dispatcher's call on the phone and then wake up the rest of the team. Or one firefighter would sleep next to the phone and have the responsibility of answering it and waking everyone up. After that, the radio-based system with the loud, shrill beep-beep prevailed.

Still, in some fire departments in the country, every time there's a call, every fire station in the area gets notified, according to the IAFF.

Escobedo, who's only worked with the new system, admits he's got the sultry woman's voice turned up as high as it goes. He said he tends to be a heavy sleeper.

Is there any worry that it's all just a little too gentle?

"Nah," said Higgins. "There's a lot of peer pressure to get up quickly in this job. You don't want to be the guy who slept through the alarm. You get called Rip Van Winkle and stuff like that. You never live it down."