Officials to upgrade wireless 911 calling

A patrol commander said a fatal truck crash illustrated the current system's limitations.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- By this summer, wireless 911 phone calls in Trumbull County could start going to emergency call centers near the origin of the calls.
That will make quite a difference to emergency personnel responding to those calls, said Lt. Joseph Dragovich, commander of the Ohio State Highway Patrol's Southington post.
Dragovich has been pushing for Trumbull County to come online with enhanced wireless 911 service since last year. The technology is available, but local officials have to take various steps to make it happen.
Members of the county's 911 Technical Advisory Committee voted last week to recommend a phase one plan to the county's 911 Planning Committee. The planning committee, in a final stage, will submit the plan to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Those involved in the process are estimating service could begin this summer.
To provide wireless users with the type of 911 service available to land-line phones, officials have explained, each county has to reach an agreement among the emergency call centers in that county and submit it to the PUCO.
When phase one is complete, wireless calls can be routed to one of eight call centers in Trumbull County, known as public service answering points (PSAPs), instead of going to the patrol's Southington post.
The eight PSAPs are the county 911 center in Howland and seven cities, townships and a village that answer their own 911 calls. They are Liberty, Girard, Newton Falls, Warren Township, Niles, Hubbard and Lordstown.
At present, wireless calls all go to the highway patrol post, which then tries to determine where the emergency is -- and transfers the call to one of the eight PSAPs. Dragovich said those involved in planning the new system view the current way as backward.
Phases
When the first phase is ready, the calls will go directly to one of the PSAPs, depending on which cell phone tower the call goes to. The PSAP will then direct the call to the proper emergency personnel, and the call taker will know that the call came from a certain area served by that tower.
In the second phase to come later, call takers will be able to identify wireless 911 calls to a small area, much like what is available with land-based 911 calls now.
Dragovich cited a recent high-profile example to show the problem with the current system:
When a truck driver crashed into a car and a pole on state Route 82 at Howland Wilson Road on March 13, killing the truck driver, the Southington post received five wireless 911 calls.
When the first call came in, the dispatcher gathered the information about the location and nature of the accident. As the next four calls were received, they tied up all of the phone lines at the barracks.
Dragovich said it took between 60 and 90 seconds to get the phone calls answered before the dispatcher could then use an open phone line and call the county 911 center to relay the accident information.
If the first phase had been complete at the time of that accident, the wireless calls would have gone to the county 911 center first, and dispatchers there would have decided which emergency personnel to send.
If state troopers would have been needed at the scene, they would have been dispatched by the county 911 center. Thus, the highway patrol would have received its call second, not first. In situations like this, firefighters and ambulances need to be notified first -- which is why the current system is backward, Dragovich said.
Groundwork
Anthony Carson Jr., Trumbull County administrator, said county commissioners are expected to sign off on the phase one plan at a meeting later this month, while interim county 911 Director Karen Davies and others lay some of the groundwork.
Carson said Davies will send letters to the cell phone companies operating in the county, alerting them to the plans and asking for a list of their cell phone towers. With that list of towers, Davies and the other PSAPs will designate which call centers will handle calls from the various towers.
Davies has agreed to reduce the load of wireless 911 calls going to the highway patrol until the phase one system is operational. This is because the county 911 center will select one or more wireless phone companies and take over their 911 calls.
"The highway patrol has been very patient, so the [county 911 center] agreed to take some of the load off of them," Carson said.
At a meeting last year, Dragovich described a situation that increased his urgency to see the enhanced 911 system come online:
A highway patrol dispatcher listened to the phone line with a sense of dread as he heard a woman cry and scream in her home. A short while later the dispatcher heard a gun blast as the woman committed suicide.
The dispatcher was powerless to locate the woman even though someone else in the Warren Township house had called 911. The reason was because the call was made from a wireless phone. When phase two is complete, emergency personnel will be able to locate such calls so help can be sent.
The dollars to pay for the enhanced wireless 911 system come from the 32 cents per month that wireless phone customers pay to their phone company as a surcharge. That fee came from a law enacted by the Ohio Legislature.
Nancy Serafino, a Sprint representative, told the advisory committee last year that Trumbull County and Ohio, in general, are behind many other areas in terms of getting enhanced wireless 911.
runyan@vindy.com