Commissioners to recommend texting solution for emergency services
As a part of on-going efforts to improve communications for firefighters, first responders and ambulance personnel in the county, the Dubois County Commissioner recommended incorporating a text messaging system.
The recommendation will be sent to the Dubois County Council for funding approval.
According to Ambulance Services Director Suzan Henke, it adds an extra layer to messaging emergency and fire personnel about 911 calls in the county. Plus, it helps provide coverage to emergency personnel who might be located in areas of the county that have weak or no signals from the paging system.
Henke says that is true also of buildings like Memorial Hospital, which have spots where the paging cannot penetrate due to the steel structure and other impediments.
The text messaging through cellphone coverage can provide redundancy for the emergency communications to help make sure messages reach their intended targets.
Commissioner Larry Vollmer has been spearheading the push in the county to upgrade the entire emergency communications system and the texting solution is only a small subset of that effort.
He supports the addition of the texting. “Even (if) we go through all of this re-doing our communications system, the pagers, still, in certain buildings may not go off,” he explained. “Where, at least they’ll be getting these text messages.”
Vollmer says that the county has received three proposals for the re-working of the county 9-1-1 system, and have scored them to determine which one will best serve the needs of the community.
But, he also says that details are being worked out to make sure the system does what it is supposed to do.
The county will pursue a shared cost between the departments throughout the county to implement the system.
Although no firm costs have been established, Jack Hart, a consultant for Tusa Consulting Services of Kansas City, presented a texting solution to the fire chiefs and emergency services for the county in July.
Hart presented a system manufactured by a company called Fire Text Response that turns emergency pages into internet-based messages. When a page is made by the 9-1-1 call center, a box at the department being paged sends the signal and an audio file of the page to all the smartphones of emergency personal in that department. Those personnel can then respond with a code telling the department how they are responding to the emergency. That message is then cast to a TV screen at the station so other emergency responders can see everyone’s status.
The system is expected to cost about $2,800 for the receiver, computer tower and TV. Plus, an annual fee of $500 for each department to use the system. The $500 covers a certain number of texts or messages being transmitted annually and is the lowest plan available, but the fire departments agreed the amount of texts was enough to cover their annual number of emergency responses.
