The Round Table
The Emergency telephone number 911 is no longer new and many fire departments have adopted it. However, there is still some criticism of this type reporting system.
Accordingly, does your department use 911 and if so, are you tied into an answering point shared by other fire departments or agencies?
Has the use of 911 proved beneficial to your department? If not, do you have any criticisms?
William G. Brennan, Chief, East Greenwich, R.I.: We do not use the 911 telephone number in the State of Rhode Island. There has been much discussion pro and con on this matter and the consensus of opinion seems to be that it is not suitable for this area.
Rhode Island is a highly congested area and the towns and cities are one continuous surburban and industrial sprawl. The telephone exchanges overlap from one town to the next, and with duplicate exchanges and duplicate street names in the adjoining towns, much confusion could result with a central answering point.
Darrell Mcilrath, Chief, Bountiful, Utah: The Bountiful City Fire Department has been using the 911 phone system since 1964, and has been very pleased with it. The calls are answered by the police department dispatcher and when a call is for the fire department (which includes ambulance service), it is then transferred. The 911 phone system is not presently shared by other fire departments, but is expected to be in the near future.
The 911 number has also proved to be beneficial to our department, as we do get a great deal of free publicity both nationally and locally. Young people seem to adapt to it easily, and it has worked very well. I have no criticisms about the system, I just wish that everyone would use it.
Howard Wright, Chief, Live Oak, Fla.: I am currently serving on a committee that is concerned with the installation of the 911 emergency telephone number. As of this date, we are not into this system.
If we were to use this system, we would be tied into an answering point with other emergency agencies. At this time, I do not feel that this is the best solution to a better and quicker response to emergency calls.
Sam Cooper, Chief, Las Vegas, Nev.: In the City of Las Vegas we do not use 911 as an emergency number. This department is presently servicing agencies besides our own and has the sole responsibility for dispatching all fire equipment and paramedics, including a portion of ambulance calls.
With the creation of the Metropolitan Police Department within our area and a direct tie between fire and police dispatchers, it is felt that 911 would be too costly and cause an interminable delay in receiving emergency calls.
Boniface K. Aiu, Chief, Honolulu, Hawaii: The emergency telephone system, 911, became a part of the City of Honolulu’s activity on March 20,1975 and has proven to be an improvement over the former method of handling emergency calls and seems to be working very well. Instead of each department, fire, health (ambulance), and police individually receiving calls under independent phone numbers, the 911 system through a central office, provides for the emergency calls to be relayed to the responsible agency. After the conversion, we found the system to work satisfactorily without any delay caused by the relay of phone calls.
In the near future, effectiveness of 911 will be enhanced when the local telephone company makes it possible for the public to make emergency calls from a pay telephone station wit hout the use of coins.
Charles N. Black, 4th, Chief, Huntingtown, Md.: The Huntingtown Volunteer Fire Department is located in Calvert County, Md., and is dispatched through a central control and alarm dispatching office. We encountered many problems with this system because there were several telephone exchanges within the county which terminate in central offices in other counties, causing a delay in the receipt of an emergency request.
The County turned to the 911 emergency number in 1977 with great success. When the 911 system was implemented, the telephone company isolated the telephones which were within the geographic boundaries of our county and connected them into our 911 system. This now means that no matter what the exchange, a person dialing within Calvert County will be answered by the Calvert County Control Center.
The Calvert County Control Center also dispatches the county sheriff deputies and the local state police units.
Frank L. Leizear, Chief, Bethesda, Md.: The Bethesda Fire Department is tied into a county-wide 911 system. All telephone calls received on 911 go to the Montgomery County Alarm Headquarters. They handle all emergency calls for the sixteen fire departments, two rescue squads and the county police. The 911 emergency telephone system has proven satisfactory to us.
Earl Smith, Chief, New Castle, Ky.: Henry County is a large rural county in north central Kentucky, and is served by five fire departments and four emergency squads. Each fire department and emergency squad has it own volunteer dispatcher.
The tremendous expense of installing, maintaining and staffing a central dispatch system has made it impossible for Henry County to adopt the 911 emergency telephone number system.
Adolf P. Jacobsen, Chief, Bloomfield, Conn.: We do not have the 911 emergency telephone number system in Bloomfield. We have our own dispatch service for the town that provides fire dispatching only, with three dispatchers working forty hours per week and seven part-timers filling in on weekends. All our dispatchers are paid. (The fire department is volunteer). We are very satisfied with this system.
Jack Cooper, Chief, Edmonds, Wash.: The City of Edmonds Fire Department uses the 911 emergency telephone number. We are tied in with three other fire departments, five police departments with intra communications with the Washington State Patrol and the Snohomish Sheriffs office.
I personally feel that 911 has proved to be very beneficial to this department in that a central receiving and dispatching operation can easily coordinate and dispatch the proper agency with little or no delay. It also has been beneficial to the people within the entire area in that they do not have to look at nine different phone numbers and then attempt to determine what agency actually covers them in the type of emergency they have.
Dean B. Brandt, Chief, Lebanon, Ind.: I have been in the fire service for eleven years and have tried to convince our local agencies to convert to the 911 emergency system and have a central dispatch for the county. I have seen this work in other areas and know that it can work here. It can possibly save the taxpayers’ money in the long run. I still hope to see this system go into service here some day.
Kenneth T. Chaplin, Chief, La Plata, Md.: Charles County has had the 911 system in operation since August 1974. The system is operated by the Charles County Communications Department, which is located adjacent to the sheriffs department in La Plata.
The Communication Center is manned 24 hours a day with a minimum of three dispatceers per shift, who answer all 911 calls for the fire department, rescue squad, and sheriff department, and radio dispatch all emergency calls in Charles County.
The 911 system has proved to be beneficial because it saves time, is readily known to the residents in the county, and has reduced the amount of false alarms due to the call back and traceback capability of our system. We believe that our system has worked very well in our area.
Odell Mclane, Chief, Rupert, Idaho: We have a joint communications system consisting of Minidoka County Sheriff, Rupert Police Department, Rupert Fire Department and West End Fire Department all of which use the 911 emergency telephone number. This system has not been in service long enough for us to adequately judge it, but we feel it will prove satisfactory.
