The Norfolk Volunteer Fire Department operates on an annual budget of $132,000, barely enough to sustain its aging rigs, train unpaid crews and keep the lights on at the station in the hills of northern Connecticut.
Not long ago, it faced a different kind of emergency: The software system it relied on to track detailed incident information was no longer going to be usable. A company backed by private equity investors, ESO Solutions, had acquired the platform and planned to shut it down. The alternative software it was offering would raise the community’s costs from $795 per year to more than $5,000.
Urgently looking for an alternative, the department found a cheaper system, but then ESO bought up the other brand. It left the department in a bind. “We don’t have a big tax base,” said Matthew Ludwig, an assistant fire chief in Norfolk. “We have to watch our pennies.”
Much of the software used by firefighters and other emergency responders was initially created by people who worked in those fields and felt a calling to keep prices affordable. But now fire chiefs around the country are scrambling to manage shrinking options and soaring costs as corporations flush with cash from Wall Street have raced to dominate the market.
Volunteer fire departments, which make up 85 percent of the roughly 30,000 departments in the country, have been particularly strained.
ESO, backed by the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, is one of many companies aggressively investing in public safety systems, where tax dollars provide a steady source of revenue. Some of the companies have come to dominate the supply of fire engines, emergency radios and fire retardant, among other vital products — with fire and police agencies objecting to the sharply rising costs.
Eric Beck, the chief executive officer at ESO, who once worked as a volunteer firefighter himself, said the company had acquired several software businesses that were on an unsustainable footing and needed investments or pricing adjustments to make them viable into the future.
“If you aren’t on a sustainable path, you can’t reinvest, you can’t ensure compliance, you can’t ensure innovation,” he said.
ESO is presently serving about 20,000 of the 30,000 fire departments in the country, company officials said, and some of the departments it does not supply do not use software at all. The two other leading software suppliers in the industry — ImageTrend and First Due — are also funded by private equity.
The three brands have been pushing to win contracts to facilitate not only basic fire department data but also fire station scheduling, inventory tracking, hydrant management, inspections and medical information on people treated for injuries. Linking these software streams, company officials say, could give departments the ability to analyze coordinated data all the way from the initial 911 call to dispatch to on-scene treatment and finally hospital admission.
This week, the three leading software brands were among the most prominent sponsors of a technology convention in Texas hosted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. At colorful booths around the main ballroom and in presentations, company representatives showed off their software capabilities and pitched chiefs on how the latest technology could make their lives easier.
Some fire departments have welcomed the modernization. Others have been wary of the rapidly mounting costs, and during the conference, they commiserated about the high prices.
“Don’t be afraid to push back,” Mark Niemeyer, the head of the Western Fire Chiefs Association, advised a group of fire chiefs.
A Spending Spree
Founded in 2004, ESO provides a range of software for fire departments, hospitals and emergency medical services.
In 2016, new backing from the private equity firm Accel-KKR helped the company finance an acquisition spree. It scooped up trauma data vendors such as Digital Innovation, Clinical Data Management and Lancet Technology. It also acquired Station Check, which helped fire departments track their equipment; eCore, which helped departments manage firefighter schedules; and FIREHOUSE Software, a brand used by some 11,000 departments — including Norfolk — to manage everything from incident tracking to fire truck maintenance records.
Then, in 2021, another private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, invested in ESO. Vista had long been focused on developing software companies, including through acquisitions that could expand a company’s market share. With some $100 billion in assets under management, it is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, helmed by Robert F. Smith, a billionaire who a few years ago agreed to a $139 million settlement with the federal government in what was one of the largest tax evasion cases in the country’s history.
With the support of Vista, ESO’s acquisitions continued, including perhaps the most important brand for volunteer fire departments: Emergency Reporting, which was serving some 7,500 fire and E.M.S. agencies in North America, including Norfolk.
Adrian Mintz, one of the co-founders of Emergency Reporting, was a longtime firefighter and emergency medical technician. When he started the business, he said, departments needed better tools to report incident data to the federal government; he said his company could fill that need while keeping costs down for agencies with tight budgets.
“We were all aware that volunteer organizations were not going to have a lot of money to spend,” said Mr. Mintz, who still serves at a volunteer fire department in Skagit County, Wash. “We deliberately kept prices down.”
The company’s software suite expanded over the years to include tools to manage fire hydrants, maintain equipment, and assist with staff training and scheduling. Mr. Mintz and his partner brought in a venture capital firm to invest in the company in 2019, leaving them with a minority stake. The venture firm later sold the company to ESO.
After the acquisition, ESO decided to shut down Emergency Reporting.
“We said, ‘What’s the best go-forward platform?’” said Mr. Beck, the ESO chief. “Because we can’t invest in multiple platforms and sustain the rate of innovation.”
Mr. Beck said it was also clear that Emergency Reporting was not on a sustainable course, although Mr. Mintz said the company had invested in substantial updates to the software.
“To say the company was unable to keep it running or upgrade it, I would not agree with that statement at all,” Mr. Mintz said.
‘A Black Eye’
Greg Whited, the chief of the Mesilla Fire Department, a mainly volunteer agency in New Mexico, said he was assured at the time of the Emergency Reporting acquisition that ESO did not plan to kill the product. His department had put a lot of time and energy in making the software a central part of its work, he said.
But he said that it eventually became clear that ESO was not going to sustain the product. The federal government is poised to transition in the next few weeks from a data reporting standard known as the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) to a new system known as the National Emergency Response Information System (NERIS). As the shift was in the planning stages, ESO began telling customers that it would not make Emergency Reporting software compatible with the new standard.
That left Mr. Whited feeling mistreated. He began hunting for an alternative, and the department ultimately decided to purchase software from First Due, a company backed by another private equity firm, JMI Equity. In the process, the Mesilla department’s costs rose from about $4,000 a year to $12,000 a year, although Mr. Whited said the new software has more tools.
Mr. Whited said he refused to consider ESO as an option. He compared the company’s treatment of the fire department to an abusive relationship.
“I’m not going to come back with sunglasses on, covering a black eye,” he said. “You’ve taken advantage of my department. I’m not using you as a vendor unless you are the last one.”
ESO officials said the company would not comment on specific contracts but noted that the old software programs did not have the modern technology and robust infrastructure available in its current system.
In Goshen, N.Y., an assistant fire chief, Danny Graham, was initially open to continuing with ESO. His priority was finding a way to seamlessly migrate the department’s historical data and protocols from Emergency Reporting to the new system.
But he said he was told that ESO could port over only some of the department’s data, not all of it.
There was a different problem with another software contract the county had. Officials there had spent more than $100,000 on equipment to implement a communications tool known as ROVER that helped fire agencies notify responders of an incident and track who was responding. ESO had acquired ROVER and said it was shutting down the platform.
The emergency services department had to turn to a new vendor — one that has a strategic partnership with ESO. The costs went up, Mr. Graham said.
Managing Budgets
Geoffrey Giordano, a longtime manager at the Stevenson Volunteer Fire Company in Monroe, Conn., built the ROVER platform, starting more than two decades ago. He was among those who initially complained when he saw the cost for ESO’s fire software. He was eventually able to negotiate a price that was only double the department’s previous cost.
He said the escalating prices could drive some departments back to using paper records. But he also conceded that he was too slow to raise prices at ROVER over the years. Costs do go up, he said, and while some of the prices he was quoted for new software seemed excessive, others did not, including his final deal with ESO.
“Would I like it to be less? Sure,” he said. “Do I feel like I’m being gouged? No.”
In Norfolk, the question of how to sustain operations in an era of generally rising costs is a constant worry. This year, the maintenance budget jumped $5,000 because a truck needed a new set of tires. Yet the department has limited funding, forcing it to turn to silent auctions and karaoke fund-raisers to help sustain operations.
The problem with ESO’s software proposal, Mr. Ludwig said, was not just the higher cost for the new product. When the department made the decision to drop ESO and asked the company for a copy of Norfolk’s own computer records to begin migrating to an alternative system, Mr. Ludwig was told that if the department wanted the data before the ESO contract came to an end, it would cost $1,200.
The department switched anyway, to a smaller company, Alpine Software, that is charging it $2,200 a year, less than half of the initial ESO quote. By Mr. Ludwig’s calculation, it was worth it.
Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle.
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