Pottawatomie County residents aren’t expected to experience major differences when calling 911, but where and how calls are answered will improve today.
Pottawatomie 911 Director Melvin Potter will flip the switch at 10 a.m. today to change to the enhanced 911 system, which will provide 911 service to the entire county with the exception of Shawnee. Shawnee already provides enhanced 911 services to its residents and is not participating in the county 911 system.
Enhanced 911 system will provide dispatchers with callers’ names, telephone numbers, addresses and who’s responding. With the basic system, the caller has to provide such information. Until all the addresses are confirmed in the 911 system, some addresses will not be available for automatic review by dispatch, Potter said.
Potter said dispatchers still will ask “911, what is the location of your emergency?” because the emergency may not be in the location of the person calling.
“If an ambulance is needed, the call taker (dispatch) will page out the responsible fire department and start them on their way,” he said. “Then a call transfer will be made to either Shawnee or Seminole, depending on where the ambulance is needed.”
Potter said the call taker at Shawnee or Seminole will dispatch REACT, MEDICUS or Konawa EMS. In southwest Pottawatomie County, the Pottawatomie County Public Service Answering Point (PSAP) will dispatch Wadley EMS in Purcell.
All county addresses outside of Shawnee and McLoud have GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates built into the 911 system, and Shawnee and McLoud will dispatch their own calls.
Potter said McLoud has elected not to be part of the countywide dispatch area. The county’s PSAP will receive calls for McLoud but will have to send the call to McLoud’s center for dispatching fire and police. Tecumseh, Maud and Asher elected to have the county’s center dispatch fire and police departments.
Potter said the switch will begin at 10 a.m., but it may be the afternoon before the change is completed. Officials will begin with Windstream telephone exchanges, followed by the other telephone exchanges, including AT&T, Konawa customers with a telephone exchange in Pottawatomie County, and Wanette.
He said the northern part of the county using the Shawnee telephone exchange will not be switched over until September because of system requirements.
The cost of providing enhanced 911 system mostly was paid for with the one-cent sales tax revenue, Potter said.
Estimated total cost of the improvements is about $750,000. Expense for the remodel of the Tecumseh Emergency Management office to the new PSAP is about $175,000; equipment cost is about $400,000, including radios, security surveillance, computers, computer-aided dispatch, call handling equipment, furniture and office equipment; and mapping and addressing costs, $125,000.
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Amanda Gire may be reached at amanda.gire@news-star.com or at 214-3934.
