Incident Times
Incident Times
Incident times in Responserack are in twenty four hour clock, i.e. hours and minutes, where hours are 00 (midnight) to 23 (11pm). Responserack does NOT support AM or PM signifiers. Responserack does not capture seconds. As such, times in Responserack are of the format HH:MM, e.g. 19:20 or 12:00 or 06:30.
(For the record, HHMM and HMM are accepted and even MM will be evaluated in context, e.g. if toned at 13:10 then "11" will be read as 13:11, whereas "09" would be read as 14:09 ... i.e. in the next hour. If in doubt, just type HH:MM for simplicity.)
IN THIS ARTICLE
Times for an incident report fall into four main times.
| Time | Definition | Examples |
| Toned At | When the fire department was dispatched or toned out over the radio. Dispatched Time. | 10:00 |
| En Route | When the first unit leaves the fire station (leaves the barn) or starts to respond. | 10:09 |
| Arrival | When the first unit arrives on scene (or in the area of an incident, e.g. a smoke report.) | 10:14 |
| Terminated | When the last unit leaves the scene and/or clears the scene. Cleared Time. | 11:30 |
NOTE: If an incident is cancelled, report cancellation time as termination time.
En route time of "11 minutes" is calculated from the "Toned At" to "En Route", the Arrival time of "20 minutes" is calculated from "Toned At to "Arrival", and the incident duration of "41 minutes" is calculated from "Toned At to "Terminated".
NOTE: Times are recorded to minute precision, not seconds.
Toned At Time
Incident Toned At time is the Dispatch Time; i.e. when the fire department was notified of the incident via radio.
En Route Time
When the first department unit leave the station, or (if already in transit) heads towards the scene. This allows calculation of "drive time", i.e. how much of the "response time" (toned to arrival) is taken up by driving.
NOTE: If an incident is cancelled before units respond, there may be no en route time.
Arrival Time
When the first department unit arrived on scene, or in the area (e.g. for a smoke chase.)
NOTE: If an incident is cancelled, there may be no arrival time.
NOTE: The NFPA response time standard of 20 minutes (from toned to arrival) is used by NFIRS as a sanity check, to ensure against typoed values (e.g. an extra hour or more by accident.) In more remote locations response time is regularly beyond this standard, due to drive time alone.
Termination Time
When the last department unit leaves or clears the scene.
NOTE: If an incident is cancelled, report cancellation time as termination time.