E911 Communications
E911 is a communications system that helps emergency personnel – including law enforcement, fire departments, ambulance, and rescue agencies – respond efficiently to calls for emergency assistance. When someone dials 9-1-1, the call is answered by trained personnel at the county’s E911 Center. The E911 dispatchers doesn’t just transfer the call or pass on information, they analyze the situation, decide which emergency agencies to dispatch, and guide them to the emergency.
When the 9-1-1 concept was first developed in the 1970s, the only information a 911 operator had was the caller’s telephone number. Today, Sequatchie County’s E911 center uses computer technology to show a caller’s location on a map, regardless of whether the caller is using a cell phone or a land line.
How does a dispatcher decide which emergency responder to send?
The dispatcher’s first step is to determine where the emergency is happening. She then determine whether anyone is injured. If so, she dispatches the ambulance immediately. Then she will determine whether police, fire, or rescue personnel need to be deployed.
How much does this system cost and how do we pay for it?
The E911 center manages radio communications and emergency dispatching for about $140,000 a year. The city of Dunlap contributes $40,000 to the budget, and the county contributes $90,000.
The E911 center also receives money from the pool of funds that the state collects from telephone bills, including cell phone bills. Last year, those funds totaled about $54,000. Due to some budget shuffling at the state level, the E911 Center expects to receive about $72,000 from the state this year.
Why is it so expensive?
E911 is all about smooth, fast communications – getting accurate information about the situation to the appropriate emergency responder as quickly as possible can save someone’s life. The idea is simple, but the technology necessary to make that happen is complicated, and it changes constantly. For example, the technology used to determine the location of someone on a cell phone is completely different from the technology that can locate a caller on a land line. Soon, the center hopes to be able to locate callers who are using a “voice over IP” service – or calls that are made using the Internet – as well. That, too, requires different technology. E911 personnel also receive extensive training – not just because they must work in a high-tech, high-stress environment, but because the state requires it.