Fire chief Rod Montgomery address city council. (Photo by Shawn Slaght)The Moose Jaw Fire Department will be getting an upgrade to its software to call back firefighters in emergency situations.

The software, known as FIRE 56 Telestaff, was purchased in 2015 but internet browsers no longer support the outdated version.

"It will have an upgrade as well. It'll send out texts instead of just the phone call," said fire chief Rod Montgomery, speaking to city council on Monday night.

"We have eight lines so it will phone out eight people at one time. So, if there is a callback and we need five people it's certainly better than manually doing that."

The software update is expected to cost $14,000, which the funding is available through the Fire Major Equipment Reserve. The expenditure went to city council because it was never approved by council during the budget process.

"We own the software, we just need to upgrade it to a newer version and the cost is simply to pay the companies professional services group to do the upgrade for us," said information service manager Ryan Nelson. "We aren't buying any new software or anything of that sort."

The expenditure was passed by council unanimously.