Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Plano better equipped for emergencies

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 15:28:44 -0400

Plano better equipped for emergencies

Technology upgrade will be boon to 911 dispatchers

04/18/2003

By TIM WYATT / The Dallas Morning News

PLANO – The city's 911 dispatch center is getting a long-awaited upgrade
this spring that will help emergency operators trace cellphone calls, among
other advancements in technology.

On Thursday, Plano operators and dispatchers returned to a newly
renovated Public Safety Communications Center in the basement of City
Hall, while technicians fired up equipment in the latest phase of a $14
million project to update an aging emergency system.

The new equipment and software will enhance 911 technology and digital
mapping to speed response times for police, fire and medical emergencies
across the city's 72 square miles, said Ron Timmons, communications
director.

The renovation "wasn't just a wallpaper swap-out," Mr. Timmons said.
"This is going to keep us current with technology and meet the needs of
the citizens in emergencies for years to come."

In the last three years, officials said, calls to the city's dispatch center
have decreased slightly, which officials attribute to a public education
program that showed residents how to contact authorities for
non-emergency calls.

Yet officials moved ahead with funding a system upgrade because most of
its hardware and software was more than 12 years old.

"With computer technology changing as fast as it does, imagine working
today on a 12-year-old personal computer," said Mr. Timmons. "It's time to
update if we're going to keep pace with the need for emergency
response."

Last year, 911 operators in Plano received more than 171,000 emergency
calls, with about a third coming from cellphones. An additional 344,000
non-emergency calls were handled by the same operators, totaling more
than a half-million calls for the center's 50 operators and dispatchers.
That's more than two phone calls for every man, woman and child in the
city.

The city's first complete 911 system failure happened in 1999, when an
eight-hour commercial phone outage prompted officials to send police
cruisers across the city to patrol for accidents and fires while workers
rushed to restore service.

The upgrade has backup programs to reduce the likelihood of another
system failure, said Bruce Glasscock, a city administrator whose job
includes overseeing public safety communications.

The systems include:

• A computer-aided dispatch system.

• Digital mapping.

• Automated vehicle tracking of police cruisers.

• An improved radio system.

"It's a major overhaul of the system that's going to be installed in the
coming 12 months," Mr. Glasscock said. "We're going to be on the cutting
edge of technology available for use in public safety."

Locating cellular callers is the bells-and-whistles feature that greatly
broadens the center's capabilities. In the past, the best an emergency
operator could do was identify a cellphone number, not the location of the
caller.

Melissa Tutton, the city's 911 coordinator, said new features will map a
cellular caller's whereabouts within a 50-foot radius in seconds.

"We hope callers know where they're at, but that's not always the case,"
Ms. Tutton said. "We've had several instances where a caller didn't know
where they were and we had to spend up to an hour looking for them.
Now, it should take less than a minute to pinpoint them and get help on
the way."

When Plano's upgrade is complete, in about six weeks, it will join Denton
and Tarrant counties in having comprehensive 911 tracking ability.
Richardson and Dallas have almost completed similar upgrades.

"It's going to make emergency operators much more effective with the
calls they are getting," Ms. Tutton said. "But you're still going to get 15
wireless calls for that wreck at Park and Preston."

E-mail [email-masked]

http://www.dallasnews.com/localnews/city/collin/stories/041803dnccoemergency.4279e.html

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