Every day a lot of men have to shave. No matter how good a job they do they have to do it all over again in a day or two.
Once a year the VC Fire Protection District has to map as much of the district as it can before the fire season begins in earnest and send out letters to property owners warning them if their property poses a fire hazard. No matter how good a job the district does, it has to start the job all over again in the spring.
It used to be that this was a very labor-intensive process, with firefighters or volunteers traveling to the parcels in question. Inspecting them and then returning to enter the data in the computer.
Assistant Fire Marshal Jim Davidson changed all that using a bit of software that cost the district about $5.70 to rent, but which is saving hundreds of person/hours. Because of this breakthrough, the district has, early in the fire season, inspected and noted more properties in the first few months than it has ever done of the course of an entire season before.
Ten weeks into the fire season they are saving an average of three people at $20/hour. “We don’t have enough volunteer hours to waste,” observes Davidson.