It is important for communities to have a unified, hosted phone system in place. One recent example comes from Greenville, S.C.
The reason for such a need was highlighted last month when some 8,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite caught fire at a local chemical plant, New Life Chemical. It released noxious fumes, and residents needed to be evacuated.
Multiple fire departments responded to the emergency. It was a major challenge. But the departments use different radio bands. Firefighters and officers from the different departments could not speak to each other using the existing equipment.
In fact, Greenville News reports that most of the 14 fire departments found in Greenville County cannot communicate with each other with existing technology. This is particularly a concern because as the newspaper reported, “Dispatchers often have to act as go-betweens to relay messages from officials of one agency to another working on the same scene.” Often, callers to 911 also get transferred from a county 911 center to another dispatcher and need to repeat the details, when time is of the essence.
“Fire doubles in size in a structure about every two and a half to three minutes,” Steve Graham, chief of the Boiling Springs Fire Department, told the newspaper. “So each one of those seconds you lose contributes to fire growth and the survivability of those occupants.”
“It’s a very, very dangerous environment for firefighters when every firefighter on the scene does not have the ability to communicate with one another,” Greenville Fire Chief Stephen Kovalcik added in a statement to the newspaper.
"We don't have a central communications within the county for fire service. EMS has it, Sheriff's office has it, Fire Service doesn't," Gantt Fire Chief Jay Mitchell told WSPA TV.
Now, two fire districts in northern Greenville County even need to have calls phoned in through North Carolina. The newspaper also pointed out that in Greer the fire department cannot speak to the police department via the radio. And in Travelers Rest, fire calls are routed to an EMS dispatch center at County Square.
To improve the technology the cost may run as much as $20 million. That money may need to be found in the near future, somehow. The Greenville County Fire Chiefs Association has warned, “We no longer have the luxury of staying in our own jurisdictions and not being part of the larger solution.”
Kovalcik also pointed out that in two to three years Motorola (News - Alert) will no longer provide service for the aging radios the city’s fire department uses. Greenville County will face a similar problem.
Greenville County’s 2012 study considered a consolidated dispatch center, but not a unified communications system, according to County Administrator Joe Kernell. Looking ahead, there could be a countywide radio system. One option may be using some of the bandwidth the state leased to Clearwire (News - Alert), after SC-ETV converted from analog to digital. Another option is using the state Department of Transportation’s fiber optic system.
Nationally, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovation Technology Administration is developing Next Generation 9-1-1. That would let dispatchers use live video calls, similar to Skype (News - Alert), receive text messages, and send out electronic maps to emergency personnel at a disaster.
Edited by Alisen Downey