During its Tuesday meeting, the Beaumont City Council unanimously approved the purchase of the Zetron MAX Fire Station Alerting System by BearCom of Beaumont.
“Fire uses Zetron for dispatching and communication for Fire and EMS,” a memo to councilmembers from city of Beaumont Chief Technology Officer Angela Wrightsaid. “The current Zetron equipment is [at the end of its] life and no longer being supported by the manufacturer. The equipment must be replaced to move our system towards National Fire Protection Association 1221 compliance and additional credit on our International Organization for Standardization ratings.”
The memo states that the upgraded equipment will give fire dispatch the ability to more efficiently communicate with fire and medical stations during the dispatch phase as well as provide improved response times for calls of service.
City Manager Kenneth Williams said the new system will cost the city $697,700 and will come from the capital reserve.
“It’s strictly within the fire stations,” Wright said during the meeting. “It won’t be heard anywhere else. It’s to alert firefighters when they have a call so it’ll wake them up, it’ll raise the doors, it’ll turn on the lights, it’ll get them ready to go out on call in the middle of the night."
Fire Chief Earl White said the system is strictly for internal communications.
“It will receive 911 calls,” White said. “We can actually separate those calls to the specific fire station and control internally.”
According to a letter to the council from BearCom Account Executive Michael Wise, the Zetron system can control a variety of building services.
“Included with this project is the opening and closing of bay doors and lights,” Wise said in the quote. “This will be included in the project, being that capability already exists and can be tied into.”
(c)2023 Beaumont Enterprise. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
