RedAlert Responder
Know the call before you hit the lights
Dispatch drops the call and every member's phone lights up in seconds with the address, call type, and details. Members tap responding, command sees who's coming and from where, and turn-by-turn routing puts them on scene with your hydrants, points-of-interest, and preplans already on the map. Everything you expect from an alerting app, from the company that's supported fire departments since 1994.
Alert Fast
Dispatch to every phone in seconds, with redundant delivery so the call gets through.
Know Who's Coming
Live response status by member and by station, so command staffs the call before the trucks roll.
Arrive Ready
GPS routing plus your hydrants, preplans, and occupancy hazards, pulled from your own records.
One System
Same roster, same login, same vendor as the platform your department already runs on.
When dispatch drops a call, every member's phone lights up with the address, call type, and dispatch details. No radio relay, no waiting to hear it on the scanner. Members tap responding, on scene, or available, and command sees who's coming, where they are, and who will arrive first. Volunteers respond from home. Career crews track station coverage. Officers get an accurate staffing picture before the first truck moves.
If you've used a standalone alerting app, all of that feels familiar, and it should. Fast alerts, live status, GPS to the scene, mapping on the way in, and department messaging are the price of entry, and Responder meets it.
The map is where the difference shows up. It isn't a generic street view with markers somebody imported once and never touched again. It's your preplans, occupancy hazards, and hydrants, pulled from the property records your department maintains in RedAlert. Update a preplan at the station or from the field, and the next alert reflects it. No second dataset, no re-import, no wondering whether the hydrant layer is current.
The same goes for your roster. Members are managed once, in RedAlert Desktop, alongside their training records, certifications, and everything else you keep on them. There's no separate alerting roster to maintain, no member who left last spring still getting alerts, and no reconciling two systems every time someone joins or leaves.
That's the practical difference between one more app to buy, log into, and administer, and a response layer that's already part of the platform running your department. One vendor, one invoice, and U.S.-based support in Rochester, NY that knows your whole operation instead of just the alerting piece.
See the capability behind this product: Alerting & Mobile Response · CAD Interface.
How Responder compares to a standalone alerting app
Most alerting apps do one job: get the call to your people and show who's responding. Responder does that, does more of it, and doesn't stop when the trucks roll.
| Capability | RedAlert Responder | Standalone alerting apps |
|---|---|---|
| Live dispatch alerts to every member's phone (push, text, email) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-time “who's responding” status, location, and ETA | ✓ | ✓ |
| GPS routing and navigation to the scene | ✓ | ✓ |
| Two-way department messaging | ✓ | ✓ |
| Retone: upgrade a call to a working fire or stand members down, from the scene | ✓ | ✗ |
| Mapping shows your preplans, occupancy hazards, and property records | ✓ | Generic map |
| The same alert becomes your NERIS / NFIRS incident report | ✓ | ✗ |
| Response history is reportable for grants and ISO alongside incidents | ✓ | ✗ |
| One member roster and login across alerting, records, scheduling, and training | ✓ | ✗ |
| One vendor, one invoice, and U.S.-based support that knows your whole system | ✓ | ✗ |
A look at RedAlert Responder
See it in action
Everything you'd expect from an alerting app
- Dispatch alerts pushed to every member's phone in seconds
- One-tap response status, visible live to every member and officer
- Turn-by-turn GPS routing to the scene
- Retone from the scene: upgrade a call to a working fire for all hands, or stand members down on a false alarm
- Mapping with hydrants, preplans, occupancy hazards, points-of-interest, and custom markers, pulled from your own property records
- Two-way department messaging during calls and between runs
- Timestamped dispatch and response history for every call
- Runs on members' own phones, iOS and Android, no hardware to buy
- One member roster shared with your records system, managed from RedAlert Desktop
- Built for volunteer, career, and combination departments
- U.S.-based support from real people in Rochester, NY
Common questions
What is the RedAlert Responder App?
RedAlert Responder is Alpine Software's fire department alerting app. It pushes live dispatch alerts with address and call details to every member's phone, tracks who is responding in real time, and includes GPS routing with your preplans and hydrant mapping. Because it's part of the RedAlert platform, it uses the same member roster and the same property records your department already maintains.
Is RedAlert Responder fast and reliable enough to replace our pagers?
Yes. Alerts push to every member's phone in seconds, with text and email alerting options. Departments run Responder as their primary notification method.
Can RedAlert Responder replace our standalone alerting app?
Yes. Responder covers what a standalone app does: live dispatch alerts, who's-responding status, GPS routing, mapping, and department messaging. What you gain by switching is one less system to administer. Your roster lives in RedAlert Desktop with everything else you keep on your members, and your map reflects the preplans and hydrants your department actually maintains.
We already use IamResponding, Active911, Chief360, or another alerting app. Do we have to switch?
No. If your members are comfortable with the app they have, keep it. RedAlert Mobile handles the field side, truck checks, daily logs, inspections, and NERIS reports from the scene, and it runs alongside whatever alerting service you already have. There are good reasons to stay put, and we see them all the time. Plenty of counties provide an alerting app to their departments for free, and plenty of departments need to stay on the same app as their mutual aid partners. Neither is a reason to give up field reporting. Departments that do switch to Responder consolidate to one roster, one login, and one invoice. That's a real benefit, but it's your call, and is a reason why our system is modular.
What is the Retone feature?
Retone lets a member change the status of an active call from the app and push that update to everyone. Arrive at an automatic alarm and find a working fire? Upgrade it and every member's phone gets an all-hands alert. Arrive and find a false alarm? Stand the department down so nobody else responds to nothing. Dispatch sends what it has at the time of the call, and Retone lets the people on scene correct it in real time. It's one of the features departments tell us they can't go back to living without.
What happens in the station when a call drops?
RedAlert Station Board turns any TV or monitor into a live command board. The moment dispatch drops the call, the screen shows the active incident, mapping, and who's responding, updating live as members tap in from their phones. Between calls it runs weather, station announcements, and department messages, so the board earns its place on the wall all day, not just during a run. Station Board and Responder work off the same call data, so what's on the wall and what's in your members' pockets never disagree. Members walking into the station see the same picture the crew already en route is looking at. Add RedAlert MDT and the rig gets it too, with CAD data and preplans on the tablet before arrival. Station Board runs on hardware you probably already own: any TV or monitor with a display device connected.
Does the Responder App work for volunteer departments?
Yes, and volunteer departments are where it earns its keep. Members get alerted wherever they are and mark themselves responding from home, so officers see live turnout instead of guessing who's coming. It works the same way for career and combination departments, where station coverage is the more common concern.
Works with the rest of the RedAlert family
Every product syncs into the same database. That's what all-in-one means.
See RedAlert Responder in action
A real walkthrough with a real person, shaped around how your department runs.