I was reading through May’s DRW magazine (I know, I’m behind :o/), and I came across an article written by Cooper City Mayor Debby Eisinger about consolidating 911 services county-wide. I didn’t realize how fragmented the 911 service centers are, so this was an interesting read for me. Did you know that Broward County is served by 11 different dispatch center for 911 calls? Each center has different levels of service, costs per call, and equipment that they use. I was also surprised to find out that not every municipality has its own dispatch center. Because there are so many centers, there can be delays and possible errors in transferring calls, especially when a 911 call is made from a cell phone because cell towers are programmed to route the 911 calls to a pre-determined center, which doesn’t necessarily mean that that center can actually dispatch help. Once the call is transferred, the initial center doesn’t talk to the new one, so the process starts all over again and causes a delayed response. Apparently, this happens to 10% of 911 calls every day. I can’t even imagine how scary it is for someone to call in with an emergency, be transferred to another line, and then have to re-tell their emergency.
In 2002, Broward voters supported a referendum changing the Broward County Charter to provide for a county wide “Enhanced 911 communications infrastructure that would facilitate the closest unit response”. The goal is to improve service and safety by eliminating the delay caused by transferring 911 calls. The Committee addressing this issue (that the Mayor sits on) recommended that the centers are consolidated to 3 existing centers that are already able to deal with Category 5 hurricane emergencies. Doing it this way not only increases our safety by decreasing delays, but there will be no need for any large “capital improvements”. All 3 centers will use the same computer and radio systems, so they will all be working from a single Enhanced 911 system. It’s estimated that the this new system can save $100 million in operational costs over the next decade since there will be 3 connected centers as opposed to 11 disconnected centers.
From what I read in this article, I really can’t wait until this is done. I mean, it’s seriously scary to think of these delays. You’re already panicked during an emergency (well I am), and we all know that every second counts until help arrives, so this is a serious issue that I’m surprised has taken this long to be taken care of given the technology we now have. I sincerely hope that no one is negatively affected by these delays until they can consolidate the centers and just have these 3 that are all connected. It’ll be interesting to see how much longer this takes. It seems like a no-brainer to me. What do you think?
The Mayor strongly supports these efforts, and is open to comments on this issue. You can reach her at954-434-4300 X260 or mayor_eisinger@coopercityfl.org.
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