Dispatchers and emergency responders aren't always on the same page, due to transmitters pushing 50 years old and disparate alert systems at various fire departments. For a long time, this has been the case in Morris County, N.J., part of Metropolitan New York.
"We've been jerry-rigging and Band-Aiding things to get them to work," said Keith Heimburg, deputy coordinator of the county's Office of Emergency Management. "There were equipment breakdowns, telephone lines would be cut and dispatchers wouldn't even know it, so pages wouldn't be going out."
But those days may be forgotten in the next few years, according to county emergency management officials who recently unveiled plans for two critical upgrades to their communication systems: a unified alert paging system and a countywide 911 emergency dispatch network which could potentially support all the county's 39 towns.
For more information, go to Government Technology.
[Photo courtesy of Andrea Booher/FEMA.]
Public Safety Projects to Connect Emergency Crews in Morris County, N.J.
by Russell Nichols on February 26, 2010
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