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Following a tornado that touched down near Forreston on May 3, Ellis County’s emergency services led a coordinated and efficient response, thanks to a newly-integrated public safety communications network. By investing in a new communications tower, a new dispatch system, and improved mobile radios, the county enabled various volunteer, municipal, and county-level emergency service organizations to communicate with one another in real-time for a unified response operation.
The new network, which first went live less than two weeks before the tornado, quickly proved its worth in emergency situations. For the first time in Ellis County, first responders from multiple agencies communicated directly with one another via a county-wide network rather than waiting for messages to be relayed across different sub-channels and uncoordinated radio towers. The potential for miscommunication and delay of vital information was greatly diminished, and the task-delegation process for emergency services was streamlined…
