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911 center needs upgrade
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The head of Trumbull County’s 911 dispatching system says the effort to locate a 71-year-old Niles man Sunday would have been simpler if it had happened six months from now.
The man had passed out and crashed his car into a Liberty Township ravine.
“Hopefully in six months, we’ll tell Century Link to flip the switch, meaning we’re ready to go,” said 911 Director Ernie Cook.
The “switch” is the one that will allow the local phone company to connect area cellphone calls to Phase-2 equipment to be used at the 911 center in Howland Township and other dispatching centers in the county.
Trumbull is one of only four of 88 counties in Ohio that have not yet upgraded to Phase 2 wireless technology, the technology that allows a 911 operator to identify the location of a wireless call to within 50 feet.
Trumbull County’s Phase 1 equipment only identifies wireless 911 calls to within a couple of miles based on the location of the cellphone tower receiving the call.
Once Trumbull County is upgraded to Phase 2 technology, the 911 center will be able to send help to a caller who doesn’t know where he is, or someone who might not be able to speak.
The reason Trumbull County is so far behind the rest of the state is because of a lawsuit filed by several of the smaller 911 dispatching centers in the county that challenged the method of spending Phase 2 wireless money.
It took 21/2 years for the suit to be resolved, Cook said.
At 5:24 p.m. Sunday, Anthony Rosasco called his sister to say he had crashed his car into a wooded ravine and was trapped inside.
When Rosasco’s cell phone company sent out a signal to Rosasco’s phone to identify his location, it indicated Rosasco was along Interstate 80 in Hubbard Township, triggering an hours-long search by police and firefighters that turned up nothing.
That’s because Rosasco and his phone were actually along Logan Avenue in Liberty Township, a mile or more northwest of I-80.
By luck, police and firefighters found Rosasco around 9 p.m., after it became dark, and a resident of Logan Avenue, a friend of a Hubbard firefighter, spotted Rosasco’s headlights.
Rosasco, who is a diabetic and was past due for an insulin injection by the time he was found, was taken to St. Elizabeth Health Center but suffered only minor injuries. He was released from the hospital Monday night.
Cook said Tuesday he will ask Trumbull County commissioners at their meeting next Wednesday to approve the purchase of about $1 million in dispatching equipment that will allow the county 911 center and the Warren center to upgrade to Phase 2.
Cook is in talks with the other 911 centers in the county — in Niles, Girard, Hubbard, Liberty Township, Lordstown and Newton Falls — about their equipment and operations.