New E-911 System Goes On Line

By Andrew Gorosko

The town is using new Emergency-911 (E-911) equipment intended to improve the routing of 911 calls placed for police, fire and ambulance responses.

Police dispatcher Corey Robinson this week demonstrated the capabilities of the new gear which was put into service at the police station earlier this month.

The town’s former 911 system employed three telephone lines to receive emergency calls. The new system uses seven lines.

While the old system used mechanically-based telephone network controls, the new $75,000 system designed by Lucent Technologies employs computer software running under the Microsoft Windows operating system.

 “We can get (emergency) calls out faster,” Robinson said, noting the new system has a variety of pre-programmed call routing routines to expedite forwarding calls to the correct emergency agency. If not handled by town police, the E-911 calls are forwarded to state police or to local fire and ambulance services.

 Between December 7 and 27, the town fielded 572 E-911 calls on the new system, Robinson said.

 Of the calls received, perhaps half involve actual emergencies, he said. Many calls received are duplicate calls which concern the same incident, he said. For example, a motor vehicle accident which occurs on South Main Street during the 5 pm rush hour can easily result in 10 or more E-911 calls, many of them originating from people in autos using cellular telephones.

The busiest time of day for E-911 calls is between noon and 8 pm, Robinson said.

When the E-911 calls are received at the police station, a computer monitor displays the name of the caller, the telephone number from which the call was placed, and the location of the telephone of origin.

 The system indicates if the call was placed from a cellular telephone, and if so, from which telecommunications “cell” the call was placed.  Knowing the telecommunications cell of origin helps police track down the geographical origin of the call if the event the cellular telephone caller does not know where he or she is when placing the call.

The new E-911 system allows police to easily learn the point of origin of “hang-up” E-911 calls, Robinson said. In the past, when an E-911 caller called and then hung up the telephone, it was time consuming to learn the point of origin of the call, he said.

 The new system also alerts police when they are receiving a TDD call. TDD (telecommunications device for the deaf) is the telephone system which employs a keyboard for the deaf, instead of a conventional telephone handset.

Of the new E-911 system, Robinson said “I like it. I enjoy using it. It’s got a lot of features.”

Police dispatchers are waiting to learn how the new 911 equipment will function under trying circumstances,  such as power failures, Robinson said.

The E-911 dispatching system is independent of the police department’s conventional dispatching system. The E-911 dispatching system is expected to continue working without problems when the new year arrives.

 Because the police department’s conventional dispatching system is based on old computer technology, its record keeping functions will cease working when the new year arrives, as a result of the Y2K computer bug, requiring police to manually keep conventional dispatching records until a replacement police computer system which is Y2K-compliant goes into operation late in January. (See related story)