County 911 center could look to Minneapolis for good example

[Thunderbolt]

MADISON, Wis. -- In August 2007, when the Interstate 35 bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, Minneapolis 911 center director John Dejung's first reaction was "Oh, no."

http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/local/317561

 

[SLWilson]

All well and good, but....

That's all well and good (having a "call taker" get the call and hacing a "dispatcher" send out the call to the radio units.)....IF a county can afford it.

But, the bottom line in ANY emergency is having personel on the phones and radios that know what to do, when to do it, who to send where and when to send them and prople who KNOW their radio / dispatch system.

Controlled chaos is about the only way any situation like that bridge falling can be described.

Yes, the first few minutes aren't very nice. But, your good personel get things rolling. Doesn't matter if they have some fancy CAD system or not. You have to keep your personnel up to speed on the old way of doing it, JUST IN CASE the CAD does crash!

Electronics, computers, trunked radio, inter-departmental communicatios are all great as long as the "system" doesn't die.

Those folks are dedicated 911 personnel. They did an excellent job. Our hats are off to them for a job well done!

The county that is having problems should look into their entire call handling process. They MUST fund out where they are lacking. Get it fixed quickly!

In our small county 911 Center (three positions) we take the call and dispatch it out to the appropriate responders.

We don't have issues of "loosing" or "missing" calls. We handle nine volunteer FD's, six village PD's a county owend/operated ambulance service and our county sheriff's office.

Again, it is a manner of your personnel's attitude, their wanting to do a good job and their dedication to the job at hand.

Steve/KB8FAR

 

[Raven95150]

I was listening to my scanner the day that bridge collapsed. In fact, I drove over the bridge several times that day.

The response to the incident was huge, probably the largest incident response ever in MN. Nearly every city and county in the metro area sent some type of help. Pretty much the entire Minneapolis FD was at the scene along with FDs from several other cities, and it took several other FDs to cover other calls in the city. Many area Police/Sheriff depts sent officers to help at the scene and to help elsewhere in the city and nearly every EMS agency in the area sent ambulances. The way this response was so quickly and efficiently coordinated was amazing. The dispatchers did an excellent job, as did everyone that responded to the incident including many civilians that dropped what they were doing and risked their lives to help.

This was the first real test of MN's new P25 TRS and it did exactly what it was designed for by allowing many agencies to efficiently communicate with each other on the same talkgroups. There is no doubt in my mind that this ability to communicate helped save many lives that day.