Jeff the Great Buys GPS for Emergency Services!

I recently witnessed two different incidences that made me start to wonder if my local emergency service providers (fire, police, etc) have GPS in their vehicles.

I am not going to call out the specific city that these emergency responders come from because I have great respect for these people and the work they do. I did however really get a kick out of what you are going to read next.

First incident was on a Friday night while volunteering with my church youth group. At about 10:30pm, 2 fire trucks, a police car, and an ambulance come roaring down the road with lights and sirens. Since there isn't much but the church on that road, we all ran out wondering what was going on...did something happen at the church?

A few fire fighters got out of their trucks, talked with the police officer, they all returned to their vehicles, turned around, and speed off. One of the high school kids hanging out at church wandered over and overheard the conversation between the fire fighters and police officer.

Turns out they were trying to get to a motor vehicle accident that was about 3/4 miles away just off the next freeway exit.

The second incident was just the other day when a fire alarm was set off at my workplace. Our company owns the 2 tallest buildings in the entire town of over 80,000 people. All 300+ employee's rushed down to the parking lot as we waited to hear what happened. We were told IT WAS NOT A DRILL.

We began to hear sirens so I looked across the parking lot, into the new subdivision that boarders our property. Sure enough here comes a fire truck...lights, sirens, and all. Only 1 problem, there is no entrance to the property from that street. So, nearly 5 minutes later the fire fighters show up from the main road.

Lucky for us, there wasn't a fire...someone just left their popcorn in the microwave too long.

These two laughable incidents have me wondering, is it time to invest in GPS for our emergency service personnel?

Or....

Do they use already use GPS and that is the problem...technology isn't perfect.

I'd love to hear from someone familiar with police and fire services.

-Jeff the Great