Emergency Communications Studied on Trip To China

By Andrew Gorosko

When Town Director of Emergency Communications Maureen Will returned with stories from her recent trip abroad, her colleagues listened with more than just casual interest. Her trip to China with a group of American public safety telecommunicators gave her some new and interesting insights into how emergency dispatching is performed in Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Guilin, and Beijing.

Ms Will explained that her trip to China with members of the telecommunications group was organized by the People-to-People Ambassador Program, a travel organization that promotes international goodwill. Ms Will said she covered four-fifths of the cost of the trip, with the state government paying the remainder.  

On the ten-day trip during the first half of March, the American telecommunicators met their Chinese counterparts and learned about the Chinese approach to organizing responses to emergency situations, Ms Will said.

Visits included stops at an emergency communications center, firehouses, a fire training academy, and a university.

Group members met with the director of an earthquake control center, learning about training that Chinese emergency services workers receive to prepare them to work in rescue situations after earthquakes occur. The Chinese employ superior technology in the field of earthquake preparedness, Ms Will noted.

Ms Will explained that firefighting in China is done by the military, which staffs the country’s firefighting organizations.

“It was enriching experience,” Ms Will said of the visit in which she learned about how the emergency services are organized in a distant land. “It was a trip of lifetime,” she said.

Chinese firefighters expressed surprise that members of US volunteer firefighting companies purchase their own fire trucks, she said.

Ms Will noted that the equipment that US firefighters use is more advanced than the equipment generally used in China.

She said that the Chinese emergency communications systems employ separate emergency telephone numbers for police, fire, and ambulance calls, rather than a unified system, such as the 911 system that is in use in the United States.

Ms Will said that through her visit, she learned some technical details about emergency communications that should prove useful in her work in Newtown. In her position, Ms Will oversees electronic communications for town police, fire, and ambulance organizations. 

The China trip provided insights for tour members into the structure and performance of Chinese emergency communications systems, she said.

One weakness in the Chinese communications systems is a lack of “interoperability,” she said. That lack of interoperability keeps the members of different emergency services units from electronically speaking to one another, thus inhibiting their knowledge of other units’ activities in emergencies.

However, the Chinese emergency services system appears to work for the Chinese, Ms Will observed.

“The people were wonderful,” Ms Will, noting the warm reception that the US visitors received in China. Ten people traveled in the tour group with which she visited China. Only one other person in that group was from Connecticut.

Historic sites which the group visited included The Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, and the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Ms Will termed the trip “an opportunity and a chance of a lifetime that I’ll never forget.”

But when considering the militaristic aspect of China, the need for conformity in Chinese society, the limits on personal freedom, and the Chinese people’s general lack of material goods, Ms Will said she is very grateful for what she has in the US.

“When I got home, I was grateful, very grateful for what I have,” Ms Will said.