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By Harriette Halepis

When a building is on fire, time is of the essence. While most fire departments are relatively quick to react when a fire has broken out, what would happen if that response time was even quicker? Would more fires be quelled? Would more lives be saved? Well, thanks to GPS technology, the amount of time it takes firefighters to respond to a fire call is about to change.

More than one dozen fire trucks in New Zealand are being equipped with GPS tracking systems. New Zealand officials are hoping that these systems will help increase fire response times. How? When a fire is called into a fire station in New Zealand, a dispatcher will be able to tell what fire truck is closest to the scene by using GPS technology.

By sending the closest truck to the scene of the fire, the hope is that more lives (and buildings) can be saved. If this GPS tracking test proves to be efficient, New Zealand will equip hundreds of fire trucks with the same equipment.

While New Zealand is the first country to utilize GPS trackers in this manner, other countries are taking notice. As the many uses of GPS technology become more and more apparent, rescue crews are discovering new ways to use the technology that will help to save lives.

In this case, increasing fire response time would be an astronomical feat. This is especially true when it comes to areas that are at high-risk for forest and brush fires. By simply speeding up communication between fire trucks and a fire dispatch center, the world of fighting fires is about to make a positive change.

Thus far, the New Zealand GPS experiment is proving to be rather effective. This means that many more fire trucks will likely become equipped with GPS tracking systems all over the world. In addition, New Zealand plans to begin equipping ambulances with the same GPS technology in the hopes that emergency response times will become quicker all around.

Will the rest of the world pick up on this life-saving use of GPS technology? While only time will tell, it seems as though many other countries will soon follow suit. The cost of equipping emergency vehicles with GPS trackers might be high, but countries such as New Zealand see this cost as being entirely necessary.