Fire Alarm Headquarters

Fire alarm headquarters is located at the Public Safety building situated at 40 Bailey Blvd. Fire alarm shares the 911 dispatch center with the Haverhill police. Together they handle all emergency and service calls within the city of Haverhill.

The Fire Alarm Division is supervised by the Superintendent of Fire Alarm, Captain Paul Garon. He is responsible for 8 fire alarm operators as well as a signal maintenance technician. In addition to emergency dispatch, the Fire Alarm Division is responsible for the maintenance of all traffic control devices within the city. They maintain and upgrade all automatic fire alarm systems, including street boxes and Master connected boxes.

The Haverhill dispatch center is the Northern Essex County Mutual Aid Network Center, which covers 35 cities and towns and coordinates the mutual aid needs of each city and town within northern Essex County. The system has one main transmitter as well as three receiver sites located in different sections of the city.

The Fire Dispatch frequencies are 154.3625 MGHZ and 155.9925 MGHZ. Since December of 2001 the Alarm system has been utilizing the CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system. This system aids the dispatchers in providing them with all pertinent information for each call and the proper dispatch of apparatus.

The following is a rundown of alarms handled by fire dispatchers in the year 2002:

•  206 Building fires
•  81 Car fires
•  68 Brush fires
•  71 Dumpster fires
•  659 Master Box Alarms
•  125 Street Box Alarms
•  Fire calls resulting in an insured property loss: 106

•  Motor vehicle accidents: 433
•  Emergency medical calls: 4577
•  Water rescue calls: 11
•  Bomb scares: 12
•  Elevator Rescues: 16
•  Misc. Service calls: 1797

*Note: These are calls which fire alarm received and in turn dispatched, however, not all calls turn out to be as they were received. Some may be false or not as serious as perceived by the caller.