To explore the Rescue 1122 setup to see how such a service has beenmade possible in Pakistan, Umer Asif visits their establishments, explorestheir technology and even accompanies them on a real life fire incidentto get to the core of their success and highlights areas that would increase their efficiency as a rescue service

Citizens of some of the major cities of Punjab now have an emergency service available within minutes of their call, which has the required skills and resources to rescue them from a multitude of emergencies. The Rescue 1122, or Punjab Rescue Service, has, since its establishment in October 2004, proved its mettle through an impressive track record that is not usual for a government organisation in our country.

Rescue has expanded its operations to eleven more cities, with plans to cover all districts of Punjab by the end of the year.

The operations

The visit to the Rescue 1122 started off with a detailed briefing by Dr Ahmad Raza, who heads the District Emergency Operations for Lahore. “Rescue does not copy any international model of services. We have developed our own model customised to local needs,” said Dr Ahmad Raza.

He went on to explain the layout of the service in Lahore, “Every district has a District Emergency Control Room. In Lahore alone, we receive around 200 emergency calls at our control room. We have around five lines that are mapped onto the 1122 number that can be dialled from any landline or mobile number. Once a call is received, there is a standard set of questions that the operator asks the emergency caller, such as the nature of the emergency and the address. The call is then forwarded to the wireless operator. The wireless operator contacts the nearest station, from where the rescue team is mobilised.”

Lahore is a fairly large and complex city with “congested” being an understatement for the old parts. Explaining how they managed to give coverage to the whole city with their apparently limited resources, Dr Raza explained, “Lahore has a total of eight stations and one specialised vehicles station at our training academy. Besides this, we use some of the City District Government's fire stations that are no longer utilised by them, so there are a total of 14 stations with two ambulances in each. All stations further divide their areas into key points defined according to daily trends of rush hours or critical events, like rallies, etc. Ambulances are deputed on standby at these key points. Whenever an emergency call comes, it is broadcast on wireless and picked up by the nearest station, which responds to the call.
“Currently we have 21 ambulances in use, 10 fire vehicles and five specialised fire vehicles, besides HAZMAT (hazardous materials) units and three rescue vehicles equipped with cutters, ropes and equipment to break walls, etc. Every ambulance has two people and the fire vehicle has three, besides the driver. Even our drivers have specific tasks assigned to them when they reach the emergency site, so it's a complete team work,” he narrated. Rescue boasts a response time of average seven minutes — quite unbelievable, especially in the absence of any labelled streets or proper GPS mapping of addresses?

“Every station does the mapping of their area and every vehicle has the task of doing mapping drills every week. Through repeated drills and experience, the drivers have a clear picture of their areas and can find locations easily,” Dr Raza elaborated.

Talking about their coordination with the old fire brigade under the city district government Dr Raza disclosed, “The CDGL Fire Brigade service is used as a backup or supplementary service. We inform them of all fire calls that we receive and they also arrive to help us. And if they receive any calls, they call us up. We are trying to merge the two services but there are still some issues to be sorted out.

“Sometimes we are not able to respond to incidents in seven minutes because our team is already engaged in some other emergency. In that case, we mobilise vehicles from other stations, which obviously takes longer, and we guide the caller about initial first aid or emergency response. But in case we are not able to help at all, we apologise and refer them to other available ambulance services. However, this hardly happens,” he confessed.

Dr Raza highlighted an unexpected issue, “Obnoxious calls are a major nuisance. Girls wanting to befriend our boys, people calling in just to check their mobile phones (this being a toll-free number) or even people calling in to talk to us! The worst form is fake incident reporting, in which the team finds that nothing has actually happened on the reported location. We addressed this problem by designing software that now tracks all calls and maintains a database. Whenever a person calls in, the software shows the complete call history from that number. Our attendants initially request the caller to refrain from keeping an emergency number busy as it could cost someone's life, however, repeated obnoxious calls are blocked for a day or two. Our call centre operators are trained to differentiate an actual emergency call from a fake one.”

While this seemed hard to believe but later on the visit to the control centre, I was actually made to listen to a call where some women called in “just for fun”. It's depressing to see the callous attitude of our people who abuse even the services that are there for their own good!

Getting back to operations, I was told that besides expand its operations to all the districts of Punjab, they will be bringing in additional equipment and resources - including, hopefully, a helicopter. With the emphasis being on expansion, would they be able to maintain quality?

“We have established a Provincial Monitoring Cell that overlooks all the district control rooms through IP cameras and has a central communication and GPS monitoring system for vehicles. In case there is a complex emergency requiring more support, the provincial monitoring cell takes over to monitor the operation and arrange backup support. Besides this, as a routine affair, they monitor the activities of the district cells - from the overall appearance of the staff, to just about everything,” Dr Raza said.

As fire plans in old and new buildings still remain to be made a legislative requirement, Rescue has, however,

mapped in detail all the high-rise buildings as far as locations are concerned. “To fight fires in high-rise buildings we have aerial ladders of 105-feet height, sufficient for 10-storey building, the throw of the water is long enough to fight fires in existing buildings higher than this. We also have an aerial platform that can rise to 60 feet,” I was told.

Things on ground

The control centre was a room with cubicles housing five call attendants and two wireless operators. The room was abuzz with calls coming in and attendants responding to them as politely and professionally as you would expect from a commercial call centre service. The call logging software showed the CLI identification and call classification categories.

As soon a valid call was received, they passed it onto the wireless operators. Using a GPS system, wireless handsets and two large white boards on which they put up the location of all the emergency vehicles in Lahore, they had to coordinate the vehicles and any prolonged operation with backup resources as required.
A television set tuned into news channels helped them “see” any major incident, thanks to our active media and its live coverage of incidents. A shift in-charge and a control centre in-charge lead the operations. With everyone sitting in one room, coordination becomes easy.

Although the control centre seemed pretty chic with all the computers, wireless buzz and GPS screen, it still needs one step up the technology ladder to make it better and help make the operations smoother. For instance, although GPS tracking is available to track the emergency vehicles, it turns up the location of only one vehicle at a time once it status is queried. The rest of the tracking is done by putting up the locations of the vehicles onto white boards and relying on the “mind map” of the wireless operator as to what is where and how to best move a resource.
The system could become more efficient with a very large screen that would visually show the location and status of all emergency vehicles in Lahore and keep refreshing their location in real time. The location of an emergency should show up on the map and ideally computers would be able to identify the vehicle that is free and closest to the incident and should be moved. A similar suggestion also came up from the people working in the control room.
An even more efficient system would also use the CLI information to pinpoint the address or location of the caller by popping up the address for landlines and the approximate location for cellular callers; however, such a system would require a lot of integration with telecom companies.

The Provincial Monitoring Cell, housed in a separate building, had a similar set-up, with dedicated displays that gave an IP camera video of all the district control centres. Officers here monitor the district cells for attendance, attendant attire and attitude, and provide backup support for any major incident. This centre is also responsible for collating reports such as vehicle performance, fuel consumption, speed violations, etc. Looking at the control centre gives reassurance that with the aggressive expansion plans, quality would still be maintained.

The training grounds

To ensure that Rescue has a highly capable force, the training and recruitment procedure is quite tough. It involves IQ tests, physical trainings and three-month courses on rescue, firefighting, medical aid and what not. Eventually, anyone who is not fit for the job, or does not have the nerves or passion to risk his life to rescue others, drops out on his own. The training academy at Mazung, Lahore, comes as a surprise. For the least, I was expecting a decent facility, if not a hi-tech establishment. But the current training academy has been built on an old transport stand with offices inside dilapidated buildings, some of which used to be horse stables!

The building is typical of any old and dilapidated government office and is not even structurally stable, let alone having basic a fire safety set-up. Rows upon rows of beds were laid out for the huge training batch that had just come in that day, with no regard for safety or an escape plan. The provincial and district control rooms, surprisingly, too did not have even basic fire cylinders on the walls for easy access in case of a fire. The four-storey provincial monitoring cell had no alternate escape route, only the main stairs. There were no fire alarms, not even a fire bell.

Disappointing indeed.

Rescue recently announced their plans to open a help desk to educate people about the building codes for fire safety and to expect this from the role models was not very encouraging. On putting forward my concerns the initial message was that they did not need all of that since they have ample resource for fighting fires and everyone in their team was trained. However, on being questioned further, they admitted that they had a lack of funds to address these issues. Their focus has so far been on investing in equipment to help others and not on getting some for their own establishment. I was also told that a state-of-the-art training facility has been planned which incorporated all of my concerns, however, being budget-intensive, the project is facing some difficulty in getting approved.

Four years is too short a lifespan to pass judgement on such an organisation. The real test for Rescue 1122 is yet to come. They are now popular and people trust them, which in turn means more and more people will turn to them for help. How Rescue manages to maintain its standards is the real test -- which won't be too easy when they expand. The key to their success so far has been investment in the right equipment and vehicles along with a young and motivated workforce. These heroes, attired in their green uniforms and reflective jackets, have become the reason why many people still see the light of day.

Rescue has been a huge support for the Punjab Government. The importance of investing more in developing Rescue 1122 can never be under emphasised. One just hopes that subsequent governments give it due importance and don't let politics stifle its growth, rather they should be expanding this model to the rest of the country. On our end, we need to be more civilised in our attitudes and treat this force with respect and patience - so the next time you see an emergency service vehicle, fall out of the way and rest assured, for these boys are really going out of the way to help us.
umer.asif@gmail.com