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NEW 911 DISPATCH CENTER OPENS
By Joe Livernois
-April 9th, 2004
Herald Salinas Bureau
The sun broke through the morning
gloom of Salinas on Tuesday and the 911 emergency
dispatchers of Monterey County didn’t know exactly
what to think.
“It’s a shock to have sunlight,” said Brian
Daly, peering out the bank of brand-new windows in the
brand-new emergency dispatch building on Natividad
Road that was christened early Tuesday.
Dispatchers from the old Monterey office moved
into the new $7.4 million building Tuesday. Their
counterparts from Salinas will join them within two
weeks. For decades, the emergency dispatchers have
been working out of the windowless and cramped
basements beneath the courthouses in both Salinas and
Monterey. The view out the new dispatch center’s
windows isn’t exactly breathtaking – mostly the nearby
back entrance to Natividad Medical Center – but the
sun did stream in Tuesday morning.
“I think some people had a bunker mentality
when it came to emergency dispatch for a lot of
years,” said Lynn Diebold, the emergency dispatch
chief who has guided the construction of the new
building for the past five years. “The thinking was,
put dispatchers in holes in the ground for reasons of
security,” she said. “But there is a need to give
people a better working environment.”
In addition to the new and improved physical
plant, Diebold and other emergency dispatch
administrators say the consolidation of the two old
dispatch centers, along with new technology, will be
more efficient.
“This is the culmination of more than five
years of planning,” said Dave Dalby, assistant
director of the county’s information technology
department, which provided much of the technical
planning for the center. “We came in on time and on
budget. And we will be able to handle the work much
more efficiently.”
The county’s 911 Emergency Dispatch Center is unique
to California. Under contract with almost every local
public-safety agency in the county, the center takes
more than 600,000 calls and initiates emergency
responses to more than 125,000 incidents every year,
Diebold said. Costs of the operations – and the new
building – are shared by the participating agencies,
though the state and federal government chipped in
about $1.7 million to build the new 14,000-square-foot
center.
The building will also house the county’s
Office of Emergency Services and the Emergency
Operations Center, which will move in next week. Early
Tuesday, dispatchers and crews were busily working out
minor glitches with a new phone system while fielding
dozens of telephone calls.
“It’s all new, so it’s too early to say how it works,”
said Daly.
The building is wired with more than 17 miles
of cable, and the new 110-foot radio tower outside the
center on Natividad Road can link to 27 radio stations
and a major repeater at Toro Peak.
For more Info on the 9-1-1 Center Project
visit:
http://www.co.monterey.ca.us/capitalprojects/911oes.html
Wireless E9-1-1 Project
In accordance with Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) Order 94-102, the
California 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Office
(State 9-1-1 Office) has launched a project to
implement enhanced 9-1-1 services (Wireless E9-1-1)
for wireless telephone users throughout California.
Project objectives include preparing all California
Public Safety Answer Points to accommodate the
information to be delivered by wireless carriers under
Phase I and Phase II of the Order. Phase I specifies
that the telephone number and receiving cell site or
sector of the 9-1-1 caller be delivered to the Public
Safety Answer Points. Phase II adds a more precise
location, (usually with 50-100 meter accuracy or
better) in the form of latitude/longitude coordinates,
to the Phase I information.
A major emphasis of the wireless project is the
redistribution of statewide wireless 9-1-1 call
volumes to local Public Safety Answer Points.
Currently a limited number of California Highway
Patrol (CHP) communication centers handle the
overwhelming majority of wireless 9-1-1 calls. To
accommodate these routing changes, new legislation was
passed in 2000 (Assembly Bill 1263) and signed into
law by Governor Gray Davis, effective January 1, 2001.
This will allow approximately 500 local Public Safety
Answer Points to assist the 24 CHP communication
centers in handling the estimated 7 million wireless
9-1-1 calls made in California each year.
The 4 levels/phases of service are:
Phase 1: CHP will use public switched telephone
network (PSTN) to transfer calls to other Public
Safety Answer Points. Minimal telltale (jurisdiction
information at the bottom of the Address Location
Identification) will be provided to CHP.
Phase 2: Adds the enhanced transfer feature to level 1
so that the CHP will be able to transfer wireless
9-1-1 calls to other Public Safety Answer Points and
have them receive the phase 1 and phase 2 data
elements. Selective Routing Central Offices will be
linked tandem to tandem. Pacific Bell and GTE will
support the tandem-to-tandem phase 2 portion of this
project.
Phase 3: Adds selective routing based on cell sector.
This level will provide for selective routing to both
CHP and no CHP Public Safety Answer Points based on
cell sectors.
Phase 4: Adds wireless call routing based on XY
coordinates, to the most appropriate PSAP. Adds
telltale information so that Public Safety Answer
Points can selectively transfer calls to other E9-1-1
Public Safety Answer Points.
For more info
http://www.td.dgs.ca.gov/Services/911/we911.htm
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