Hamilton Fire: Protecting Our People Starts With Being Ready

For the Hamilton City Fire Department in Alabama, readiness starts with taking care of their people and making sure they have the equipment, information, and support they need to do their jobs safely.

With 12 career and 14 volunteer firefighters serving the Hamilton community, the department relies on technology to help their crews stay ready, keep equipment in service, and manage critical information — whether they’re at the station or miles away.

Using Tyler’s Fire & EMS Suite, Hamilton Fire has replaced manual processes with digital workflows that give firefighters and leadership greater visibility into daily operations.

Ready Before the Call

Every morning, Hamilton firefighters use their technology on an iPad or phone to complete their truck checks. The process gives crews a consistent way to make sure their apparatus and equipment are ready for the next call. This also gives leadership, like Matt McCracken, fire chief at Hamilton City Fire Department immediate visibility when something needs attention.

“It is vitally important that our crews make sure on a daily basis that our trucks are ready to go,” McCracken said.

That wasn’t always the process. Before moving to a digital workflow, truck checks were completed on paper and a clipboard. If a problem was found, it could take until the next day for leadership to learn about it.

“We might not see it until the next day when somebody picks it up and says, ‘Oh, there’s an air pack missing on this truck,’” McCracken said.

Hamilton also uses the software when apparatus returns from major service, completing another check before putting the truck back in service.

Solutions Built Just for Hamilton Fire

Hamilton Fire doesn’t have to adapt their processes to fit the software. The department can customize their workflows and forms around the way their crew operates.

“We probably build ours out different from other people,” McCracken said.

“That’s the thing that I like about the software: It allows me to be me. It allows Hamilton Fire Department to do Hamilton Fire Department. I don’t need to be the Birmingham, New York, or California Fire Department.”

The department has built inspection forms in the software and used them during live inspections for a first responder inspector certification class. Hamilton Fire is also working toward expanding their pre-planning efforts.

For McCracken, those capabilities ultimately support the department’s most important priority: their people.

“The most important asset that our fire department has is our people, without a doubt,” McCracken said.

“I need to make sure that every piece of equipment that we have is working in its tip-top shape to protect our people.”

Less Time Reporting Means More Time to Prepare

Hamilton Fire has also streamlined their transition to NERIS reporting, allowing for full compliance.

After a fire report is approved, the information can be exported directly to NERIS without McCracken having to download the report, move it to another system, and upload it manually.

“I don’t have to touch it. When that report is approved, it just gets uploaded to NERIS, and I can focus on something else like being prepared for the next call,” McCracken said.

Previously, those extra manual steps could create backlogs.

“My issue was, I would forget to do the manual steps that were required for a period of months, and then I would get six months behind,” McCracken said.

“Then I’d have to go spend a couple hours to download these reports and get that sent in.”

Staying Connected to Operations Anytime, Anywhere

For McCracken, one of the biggest changes is how much information he can access when he isn’t at the station.

While attending the Alabama Fire Chiefs Conference, more than six hours away, he used his iPad to check on activity back home at the station.

“I can take my iPad and pull up the system to see what type of calls my guys are dealing with in real-time, even when I’m six hours away,” McCracken said.

That visibility allows him to monitor daily activity, check on his crews, and make decisions when call volume increases. With only a few firefighters on duty at a time, that information can help him determine when additional personnel may be needed.

“Having the technology to keep up with everything that’s going on at the fire station and stay in the loop at all times is the biggest benefit for me,” McCracken said.

From daily truck checks to NERIS reporting and mobile access, Hamilton Fire Department is using technology to spend less time managing manual processes and more time staying ready for whatever comes next.

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