Lucas Sullivan, The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)

Franklin County residents likely will be the first in the state to be able to text their emergencies to authorities when calls to 911 are not possible.

The sheriff’s office and five centers in the county that handle all wireless 911 calls are upgrading to allow texting, and eventually images and video sent via cellphone. There are still kinks to work out in the $2.3 million upgrade, and the earliest the texting capability will be available likely is next year, according to the county’s Office of Homeland Security and Justice Programs.

“This will be beneficial in instances when someone is hiding from someone and can’t talk, or it’s also going to be beneficial to the hearing impaired,” said David Ziegler, who is overseeing the project in the homeland security office. “We have to make sure we do it in a secure fashion so there will be absolutely no negative impact on 911.”

The Federal Communications Commission approved an upgrade plan in August called Next Generation 911 that will lead to faster response times and allow for other avenues of communication as more people use text messages. But officials said a text message should be sent only if a 911 call cannot be made, as dispatchers must go through a series of questions to address an emergency.

The genesis of the plan was in response to the Virginia Tech campus shootings in 2007, where students, trapped in classrooms by the shooter or fears that he might be nearby, could not text 911 for help. The software was adapted from technology used to help people with hearing impairments.

It is likely, Ziegler said, that the number to text will not be 911 but will be a number that is easily remembered.

Marsha Moore, who is nearly deaf and works for the Deaf Services Center in Worthington, said being able to text an emergency would be a huge benefit for the hearing-impaired. They now use a teletype machine to make emergency calls.

“This is absolutely fabulous,” Moore said last week through her interpreter. “I am sure this will make it easier to report an emergency.”

As the upgrade is installed in the coming months, the county is trying to work with the legislature to change language in the Ohio Revised Code that forces the county to contract with the largest telephone-service provider in the area.

That would be AT&T, but other companies might be better suited to handle the technology. Verizon is testing an emergency text system in Durham, N.C., and there are similar projects in Texas.

The wireless company that is awarded the contract would have to make the service available to everyone, no matter who their wireless provider is. The technology upgrade is being funded by all wireless customers, who are charged a 28-cent monthly fee for enhanced wireless 911.

The immediate impact of the upgrade will be less waiting time between when someone places a 911 call and when a dispatcher answers. There is a 10- to 15-second delay to allow the call to be tracked to its origin. That delay will be reduced by as much as 50 percent, Ziegler said.

“I just want to emphasize we are early on in this process and the contract for the technology upgrade has not yet been approved,” he said. “But the upgrade is going to happen.”

Copyright © 2012 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.