It's a common story: An incident occurs requiring emergency personnel from different agencies or jurisdictions to respond. Once on the scene, difficulties arise because disparate radio equipment makes it hard for all those agencies to communicate.
In recent years, Hendricks County, Ind., had such an incident. Fire personnel couldn't communicate once on the scene - prompting intense discussion, and today action, in the form of a fresh radio system and the consolidation of four dispatch centers into one.
"That was one of the items that helped kick this off," said Larry Brinker, executive director of the brand new Hendricks County Communications Center, which resulted after negotiations and consultations with police, fire, emergency medical services (EMS) and public works. "We had a fire, and four different agencies arrived with four different radios. As they were fighting the fire, we'd to bypass and [give] extra radios to everyone so that they could communicate. Now each of them have the same capabilities on a single channel."
About website - following this incident - Hendricks County commissioners agreed that improving 911 communications was critical, and blessed the spending of a 911-surcharge fund on new communications technology.
Funding Dilemma
Knowing this funding was available had police, fire, EMS and public works dreaming of shiny new facilities, and spiffy new technology and capabilities - and the original plan sought to create everything happen by outfitting all dispatch centers with such things.
Officials knew what types of new technologies they wanted in the centers, but discovered that the $7.5 million generated by a $1 monthly surcharge for 911 emergency services - which was added to every phone line since 1995 - and some federal grant money wouldn't suffice for the four centers. Equipping all four centers with the technology they envisioned would cost $12 million.
"Everybody wanted to keep their very own dispatch centers, however they wanted all of the technology options they might possibly have," Brinker said.
"The initial plan we put together, which was likely to outfit all four dispatch centers with about three-quarters of the capabilities, would cost about $12 million," Brinker said. "We pared it to where we'd operate two centers, and that got us right down to $8.5 million at about 75 percent of the technology. Whenever we brought it down to one location, that freed up enough of the savings that people were able to get completely of the technology we wanted, and do it at the cost we had to utilize."
The result is a new communications center with state-of-the-art equipment that dispatches for police, fire and emergency medical in Hendricks, Avon, Brownsburg, Danville and Plainfield counties.
"During the past, a 911 call might get transferred several times before it surely got to the right place," Brinker said. "Now, all 911 calls arrived at one location, and the call-taker enters the information in to the computer."
Having all the dispatchers in one building meant a couple of things. One, fewer dispatchers will be needed; and two, personnel would be used more efficiently. The county employed 38 call-takers, down from 49 before the consolidation. The center includes 13 workstations for dispatchers, and each station has six flat video screens that display information regarding incoming calls.
When there were four centers, each needed to be staffed with several call-takers. If there is an emergency in a single area, the call-takers in another of the centers were overwhelmed as the call-takers in another centers weren't busy. "Now we have eight to 11 people scheduled working to take care of multiple emergencies throughout the county," Brinker said.
The goal was to get right down to the 38 dispatchers through retirement and attrition, and that's exactly how it just happened, Brinker said. "No one was fired."
One Radio System
Another little bit of the consolidation is a common radio system and equipment among police, fire and EMS - a long way off from the days when different departments would show up with different radio equipment.
All 250 emergency vehicles in Hendricks County, including police cars, fire trucks and ambulances, include a laptop or other digital device, in addition to a radio. Before the consolidation, there have been essentially three different radio systems through the entire state, including a local 800 MHz system and a state 800 MHz system. Unfortunately one was analog and something was digital. "The bad news was that even though [both] were 800, they still couldn't talk to one another," Brinker said.
Now the county's system is digital and allows radio communications like never before, as everyone gets the same equipment, even the SWAT teams, Brinker said. "The SWAT teams usually travel with other agencies. They now have the very same equipment, the same capabilities, and which makes an impact."
If there's a nonemergency call to the authorities, it's transferred straight to the squad car nearest the incident, as each car will soon be built with a GPS device. The authorities unit will respond by voice, over the radio or by pressing an "en-route" button using the pc. All 250 emergency vehicles will undoubtedly be equipped with a GPS device so that dispatchers can see the exact location of every vehicle. Dispatchers can also call up three-dimensional aerial photos of a house or business to alert first responders of the locations side, windows and other features of the structure.
Local police personnel can communicate directly with dispatch sufficient reason for almost every other unit. "All of law enforcement is focusing on one talk group and everybody can hear what another departments are doing," Brinker said. "The way we do this is we only broadcast the emergency dispatches on the radio because the rest of it is done over a mobile data terminal in the cars."
Sheriff Dave Galloway expects some of the kinks to be worked out of the system once the GPS devices are in place and everyone becomes familiar with multiple agencies. "I'm the sheriff of the county, and I'm not notified on some major events that take place regularly," he said. "It's minor stuff really, getting coordinated on record services, jurisdictions and things like that. We have new people working together in the dispatch center. It's a new system and they're learning and sometimes they don't know who's been notified, who hasn't been notified and who needs to be notified. And we don't have GPS operational yet. Right now we have officers being sent from too far away."
Eye on Indiana
That functionality makes Hendricks County unique in hawaii, and other regions are watching to observe how the system will continue to work. "That isn't even very common among individual cities," Brinker said. "Larger cities will generate a north district and a south district where they'll are capable of switching channels to talk, but they're not necessarily on that one channel."
An example of the brand new system's value was evident recently when an armed robbery was broadcast on the 800 MHz radio system in Plainfield. Two officers from the city of Avon been driving through Plainfield and heard the air call. They arrived on the scene within seconds and set up a perimeter before Plainfield officers arrived. Once on the scene, all units were able to communicate via the radio system. With the old system set up, those Avon officers could not have known about the robbery and could have driven right through town.
The county purchased 500 portable radios, an additional radio tower, Motorola MOSCAD firehouse and weather alerting systems, and equipped all police cars with Motorola ML 900 laptops.
"With the firehouse alerting, whenever a fire run comes out, it will tripped the tones at the firehouse, and it has the capabilities of opening the garage doors, can turn on and off lights in certain areas of the firehouse and also turns on the speakers in the firehouse, so they can hear the call throughout the building," Brinker explained.
"It had been time we in Hendricks County had the ability to talk to one another," Galloway said. "The general public will undoubtedly be better served with this particular system. The ability to communicate is of vital importance to public safety, and I'm and only one system in order that police, fire and EMS can communicate. This is going to maintain positivity for the citizens of Hendricks County."
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Police, Fire and EMS 911 Dispatch Consolidation In Hendricks County, Indiana
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