Atypical Circumstances at Your House? Wayland Fire Wants to Know

Imagine this: The responds to a fire alarm at a residence.

Firefighters arrive to find a raging fire but no one who can tell them whether everyone has safely left the house -- so they have to go inside. Unbeknown to the firefighters about to risk their lives, a photographer lives in that house (though he's out of town at the time of the fire) and he has a darkroom full of highly flammable developing chemicals just waiting to ignite.

Bad scenario, right?

It's the kind of unusual circumstance that Wayland Fire Chief Vinnie Smith said the department would like to know about in advance.

Smith said the department maintains a public safety computer database in which it can keep notes regarding particular characteristics of a given address in Wayland. When new homeowners move in, they receive a flier letting them know of the various services -- ambulance services, the Lock Box Program, etc. -- offered by the fire department.

In addition to that, Smith said new homeowners are encouraged to email the fire department with those unusual circumstances.

And by unusual, Smith doesn't mean letting the fire department know the location of every bedroom at your house or that there is a can of lawnmower fuel in the garage. As long as those bedrooms are in typical locations and you keep a reasonable amount of fuel in a typical spot (like your garage) responding firefighters will have a pretty good idea of the situation.

“If you have a bedroom in the basement, that’s not normal," Smith explained, "so that would be something we would be interested in knowing.”

In addition to an unusual bedroom location, Smith said certain medical conditions of family members could also be helpful to know. Mobility impaired individuals, for instance, should be made known to the department.

are in the process of developing a voluntary citywide program "for parents, guardians or caretakers of children and individuals who may have a tendency to wander or are a flight risk from a specific location."

While Wayland's system is much less formal, the medical conditions that the Wayland Fire Department wants to know about are similar.

In particular, Smith said, Wayland firefighters have received training in how to work with children who have autism.

He explained that the recent rise in autism cases prompted the department to take part in the training, which was conducted by an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) who is also the father of a child with autism.

There have been cases of children with autism refusing to cooperate with emergency responders, and Smith said the training was designed to help firefighters cope with that situation.

In addition to that specialized training, Smith said each ambulance is equipped with some foreign language dictionaries as well as some universal pictographs designed to help individuals communicate sensations such as pain when they do not speak the language of their rescuers.

Even with the planning and tools, extra information doesn't hurt when going into a dangerous situation.

"Anything unusual about their house or their family’s medical conditions, or anything like that," Smith said. "If they have dogs that are going to rip our femur bone out of our leg, we would like to know that."

Smith cautioned those concerned about privacy that any medical information shared with the department will not be shared with the public, but it will be entered into the public safety database for emergency responders to see.

The best way to have information entered in the system is to email Smith or Deputy Chief David Houghton at vsmith@wayland.ma.us or dhoughton@wayland.ma.us, respectively.