Several counties and cities banded together to better share information and improve 911 capabilities using a cloud-hosted spatial database.
Georgia’s Coastal Regional Commission (CRC), which does orthoimagery and lidar economies-of-scale projects through mutual peer sharing, noticed that the user groups had common problems with complying with Next Generation 911 (NG911) requirements. For instance, emergency response times could take more than 30 minutes when a call came from a hunting camp deep in the woods where there were no road names or geographic information system (GIS) presence… READ MORE
INDIANAPOLIS — The Marion County Sheriff’s Office is trying to hire more 911 dispatchers.
“Every day, right now as we’re sitting here talking, there’s a 911 call being answered and someone’s getting help,” said Maj. Michael Hubbs. “A lot of our heroes carry guns. Some have capes. Our heroes have headsets.”
Hubbs says likely everyone will have to call 911 at some point in their life.
“A dispatcher is a very important job,” he said. “Actually in some aspects, it’s more important than a police officer or firefighter. And they’re required to do a lot. So we need the best caliber of a candidate to sit in that seat…
ALBANY — A fire at a landmark church that led to the arrest of four people also revealed staffing shortages in the city’s emergency dispatch center.
City police and firefighters were called to the former St. Joseph’s Church in the Ten Broeck Triangle neighborhood on Sunday — Halloween — after a group broke into the church and began ringing the bells and setting a fire.
The calls came on a night where the city’s dispatch center was under staffed, forcing emergency calls to rollover to other agencies for service…
By Margaret Gutierrez, National Tribal Government Liaison, First Responder Network Authority
Twenty years ago, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation revealed fundamental problems with our emergency communications systems. Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics could not communicate across radio systems, and cell towers were congested with commercial usage. First responders’ inability to communicate on that fateful day underscored significant public safety communication shortfalls nationwide – including on tribal lands. READ FULL ARTICLE
PIKEVILLE, Ky. (WYMT) – The country is experiencing a shortage of first responders. That shortage has reached Eastern Kentucky. In Pikeville, firefighters, police officers, EMS workers, and dispatchers have all been hard to come by, but some have resolved the issue quickly within the city.
“I know that we were short-handed a while back,” said Pikeville PD Public Information Officer Tony Conn, “but we’re at full staff now we’re lucky enough we’re at full staff.”
Officials with the Pikeville Fire Department say the station is currently short-staffed, but are making do with the firefighters and EMS workers the station currently has and are currently searching for more hires following two recent retirements. Pikeville Dispatch is also currently searching for trained telecommunicators to fill out their dispatch center. Officials are also hopeful this issue will resolve itself soon…
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.
