Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times

Emergency communications centers at O’Hare and Midway Airports “rapidly approaching the end of their useful life” are in line for a major overhaul, thanks to an upgrade in the works that will pave the way for emergency calls and alerts through social media.

After completing a $31 million upgrade stalled by contract irregularities at Chicago’s 9-1-1 emergency center at Madison and Loomis, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has turned its attention to similar facilities at Chicago airports.

The communications center that fields 9-1-1 calls at O’Hare is in the lower level of the airport near the CTA’s Blue Line station. The center’s 27 dispatchers, seven supervisors and one manager handled 135,000 “recorded events” in 2012.

The Midway nerve center is housed in the lower level of the terminal building. Call volumes handled by the center’s 10 dispatchers, three supervisors and one manager were not known.

The hardware and software guts of the two centers have not been upgraded since 1992.

“The system and its recording capability is rapidly approaching the end of its useful life,” City Hall wrote in a “request-for-proposals” (RFP) due back July 13.

The Emanuel administration wants to replace the archaic system with what it calls an E-9-1-1 system that not only “accepts all calls, regardless of network origin,” but also allows one center to handle overflow calls from the other.

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