Director: 911 system not yet ready

The original master list of callers didn’t include
customers of two phone companies.

By D.A. WILKINSON

VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU

LISBON — Completion of Columbiana County’s Enhanced 911 telephone system is still about a year away.

AT&T has been compiling regular telephone numbers and addresses that must be 95 percent accurate before they are entered into the county’s system.

The 911 technical advisory committee that is overseeing creation of the system thought the list was close to being finished.

But Robert Emmons, the county’s 911 director, said Tuesday he discovered the information did not include the county’s Verizon or Embarq customers. Once those are added to the master list, the project can move closer to completion.

Emmons had no date when AT&T will complete the basic list.

After the list is completed, AT&T will routinely update it by adding new numbers and deleting numbers no longer in service.

Emmons added that the committee can’t give a date on when the program might begin. The county’s enhanced system will show the address from where a call was made.

The good news is that all the five of the county’s answering points are operational. They are the sheriff’s office and the Salem, Columbiana, East Palestine and East Liverpool police departments.

The committee had planned to train dispatchers this month. Emmons said that didn’t happen because of the small window of time for the training.

Training will begin Jan. 7 at the county’s Emergency Management Agency in Lisbon.

Supervisors also will have to be trained. No dates were set for their training sessions.

Emmons said that each answering point can have two dispatchers working at one time. Should an answering point have to be evacuated, its dispatchers can go to any of the other answering points and take rerouted calls from their own jurisdiction.

Safety workers could also have the option of going to the EMA office, and taking two portable dispatching centers back to their community. They could resume operations in another building to be closer to their community.

The committee plans to meet again in late January.

When the regular phone line program is completed, the committee will begin work on a system to plot distress calls from people using cell phones.

wilkinson@vindy.com