Pennsylvania 9-1-1 Call Upgrade to Yield Savings
by Tom Fontaine, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
A project to put Western Pennsylvania 9-1-1 centers on the same computer network will replace outdated equipment and cut costs at a time when budgets are tightening, emergency officials say.
One aspect of the project – enabling people to report emergencies via text message – worries Brian Melcer, Lawrence County’s director of public safety.
“To me, if someone is sitting there having a heart attack, my God, pick up the phone and call,” said Melcer, an executive board member for the Western Pennsylvania County Regional Emergency Services IP Network project, also known as WestCORE.
Melcer and other emergency officials say dispatchers are trained to ask questions and glean information from things such as background noise e_SEmD details that can’t be gathered from a brief text. In addition, it’s impossible to determine where texts originate, whereas phone calls automatically provide addresses or coordinates, they said.
“That’s why we think it’s really critical that consumers know to send emergency texts only when calling is not an option,” said Brian Josef, assistant vice president for the Washington trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association.
Since Black Hawk County, Iowa, became the first county to accept 9-1-1 texts four years ago, officials there say texts have helped victims of domestic violence and child abuse who were afraid to be overheard calling 9-1-1.
“While the (text) call volume has not been overwhelming, the calls received have proven the need for this type of technology,” said Judy Flores, director of the Black Hawk Consolidated Communications Center.
Few 9-1-1 centers across the country are equipped to receive texts, even though Americans send more than 2 trillion text messages annually and receive text alerts about everything from child abductions to weather and traffic conditions.
Although emergency officials prefer 9-1-1 calls over texts, they concede they could be beneficial for people with hearing and speaking disabilities and those who could be endangered by calling.
“I know the deaf and hard-of-hearing community wants it,” said Sharon Behun, director of the state Office for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing. The office estimates more than 1.8 million Pennsylvanians are hearing-impaired.
People with hearing and speaking disabilities routinely use teletypewriter machines to report emergencies, Behun said. Other devices, such as video phones that employ third-party sign-language interpreters or caption telephones, can lead to delays.
By eliminating duplication among counties, the upfront cost of replacing outdated equipment in the 10-county WestCORE project would be an estimated $3.4 million less than doing so separately, based on Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency estimates. PEMA predicts upfront costs of nearly $6 million for the regional project, or about $35,000 to replace equipment at each of the 168 emergency work stations.
Melcer said workers could begin installing new equipment in the year’s fourth quarter. Work could take six months. It remains unknown when people will be able to send emergency texts, with Melcer noting dispatchers will have to undergo added training.
The nation’s four largest wireless companies said that by May they will provide text-to-9-1-1 service in all counties where centers are equipped to handle such messages, according to the Federal Communications Commission. The four carriers serve 90 percent of all wireless customers.
By the end of September, all wireless companies will be required through an FCC order to send “bounce-back messages” to customers who send texts to 9-1-1 centers that can’t receive them.
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