In the years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the 911 system had undergone a major overhaul. The aging telephone system was replaced. Separate centers for medical, police and fire calls were consolidated under one roof. And new call-routing technology to prevent the whole thing from going down during a disaster was scheduled to be installed early next year.
Then Hurricane Ida hit, and the 911 call center crashed, failing its first major test.
Calls for help didn’t go through. The center was offline for 13 hours on Monday. The Orleans Parish Communication District, which runs the dispatch center, was forced to take to Facebook to tell people that if they had an emergency, they should walk to a nearby fire station or flag down a police officer to report it…
He has trained firefighters in Afghanistan and battled blazes in minus 50 C in Nunavut. He also survived a firetruck rollover in the Interior.
And he is always seeking a new challenge.
Now Geoffrey Spriggs is the new deputy fire chief for the City of Maple Ridge and is looking forward to working in a dynamic, young community where he can inspire future leaders.
Spriggs, who hails from Langford on Vancouver Island, was only 19-years-old when he started as a volunteer firefighter. It was almost by accident, said the 46-year-old from his office in Hall 1. He was interviewed as part of an investigation into a deck fire at a neighbour’s house and was subsequently invited to the firehall where he was asked to join the volunteer service…
Artist’s rendering of view looking northeast at new Rosemont Public Safety headquarters.
The scheduled Monday, Aug. 30 groundbreaking ceremony for Rosemont’s new 101,000 sq. ft. public safety headquarters has been canceled because one of the key tenants of the facility has decided not to occupy space there.
According to Rosemont Mayor Brad Stephens, Norcomm Public Safety Communications, Inc. was scheduled to occupy approximately 18,000 sq. ft. of the headquarters once it opens probably in …
Emergency management employees for the city of Hays and Ellis County are reviewing the possibility of installing a permanent 911 emergency dispatch backup system in the basement of the county’s fire/EMS building. Accidental flooding from a fire sprinker head Aug. 2 forced temporary implementation of the backup system in the Hays Fire Dept. (Photos courtesy city of Hays)
Emergency management staff for the city of Hays and Ellis County are looking at a different solution to the current backup plan for when the countywide emergency dispatch system goes down, which happened earlier this month.
The Aug. 2 accidental activation of a fire suppression sprinkler head in the Ellis County emergency communications center by a contractor soldering on the HVAC system caused more than $80,000 in water damage to computer and phone equipment…
Mutualink recently announced the launch of LNK360, a revamp of its interoperability software platform that includes new features and an architecture that is designed to improve both resiliency and flexibility, according to Mutualink Chairman and CEO Mark Hatten.
“Products evolve, especially in the software world. You get to a point in the evolution of your product that you learn that it might be better to start over, in a sense, with the product than to keep adding to it,” Hatten said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.,,
Learn about current efforts to continue to protect the 4.9 GHz Band for public safety as well as recent filings, key decisions impacting these efforts, and how you can support PSSA’s initiative to protect the 4.9 GHz band for public safety.
