Whitcom officials paid a visit to Asotin County on Monday to talk about a lapse in dispatch service over the Fourth of July weekend.
Bill Tensfeld, Whitman County’s emergency management director, and Wendy Berrett, executive director of Whitcom Regional Dispatch Center, fielded questions from Asotin County officials about the breakdown in communication during the incident.
Out of the 450 911 call centers across California, CHP Golden Gate Division had the longest averaging answering time in the state in 2023, according to California Office of Emergency Services’ data analyzed by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit.
Located in Vallejo, CHP Golden Gate Division receives tens of thousands of 911 calls every month from callers driving on freeways and highways across all nine Bay Area counties.
The victim’s phone sent his location to Apple, which then called the closest law enforcement agency – in this case, Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s station – with his satellite coordinates.
“The location that we got from the iPhone activation was spot on,” Goldsworthy said.
Tracey Porter and Lisa Buchanan, according to their supervisor, are exceptional employees who have been working for years to coordinate the best responses to emergency situations for citizens around Vicksburg and beyond.
In the lower level of the Vicksburg Courthouse, you will find the rooms devoted to Emergency Management and with it, its team, lead by one John Elfer. This team’s main priority according to Elfer is “to save lives.”
“Like with 911, it is vital that any problems with 988 are shared fast with the right people, so we understand what went wrong, and we can make it right.”
FCC commissioners today unanimously approved new rules that are designed to ensure that the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is as accessible as possible by requiring service providers to report outages to key stakeholders in a timely manner and try to reroute 988 calls to available crisis centers.
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.