Managing resources on the scene of an emergency has been a challenge for first responders and emergency managers for decades, and that hasn’t changed. But there are tools to help, and one that is being used on the California wildfire front as well as the pandemic response is the Tablet Command (TC)

The TC was developed by two firefighters in 2007 and has evolved over the years to the challenges of today.

Right now, it’s in use in the fight against Northern California wildfires in San Mateo, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Joaquin counties to manage strike team resources. The teams build an incident in the TC, enter all the resources being used and create a timestamp activity record. The TC essentially creates an activity log of what is happening on the fire line.

“San Bernardino County Fire uses it in every frontline response unit to include our fire engines, squads, ambulances, chief officers, snow cat, boats and helicopter,” said Jeff Birchfield, assistant chief for Division 1 of the San Bernardino Fire Department. “We have found it to be a very effective tool with use of map layers and CAD notes, while en-route to incidents, providing situational awareness for our battalion chiefs to monitor unit status within their battalions.”

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