Reclassification Bill gets passed by U.S. House On July 12th, the 911 Supporting Accurate Views of Emergency Services Act of 2019, otherwise known as the 911SAVES Act was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives. The act will help further efforts to reclassify 9-1-1 professionals as protective service class workers. The bill is actively being […]
Phone Service Outage Impacting 9-1-1 Calls On Wednesday, August 14th, the Anchorage Police Department alerted the community that a GCI outage for their customers caused problems with making outbound phone calls, thus impacting their ability to dial 9-1-1 in an emergency. Related Story: GCI Landline Issues Reported Throughout Anchorage Founded in 1979, General Communications Inc, […]
Several County Offices Hampered by Virus Vigo County computer systems were recently attacked by a malware virus affecting several county departments including the 9-1-1 PSAP. On July 23rd, Vigo County government computers were attacked by a maleware virus. Most offices had to continue work without access to emails and in some cases without any computers […]
While preparing your community for a hurricane, if the evacuation creates its own disaster, is evacuation still a good idea? In the aftermath of the evacuation, Garnet Coleman, the Democratic State Representative from Houston asked “Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That is the question we need to consider.” This case study discusses the challenges that arose when public officials decided that a mass evacuation of a densely-populated region was necessary 3 days prior to Hurricane Rita making landfall in Texas and Louisiana.
Santa Barbara County supervisors voted on Tuesday to separate fire and medical dispatch operations from the Sheriff’s Office, capping a two-year effort by fire chiefs to run their own emergency communications center and highlighting the longstanding rift between the public safety entities. The vote also started the process of expanding the county’s existing Emergency Operations […]
Madison County Illinois Consolidation plan has been scheduled for a public hearing on Monday, Oct. 21 in Springfield. The hearing, part of the Statewide 9-1-1 Advisory Board Meeting, will cover Madison’s consolidation plan that was resubmitted in August. The original plan was approved July 2017 by the Emergency Telephone System Board (ETSB), but numerous issues, […]
Nationwide Outage for AT&T Wireless Customers Early Tuesday morning, 9-1-1 PSAPs began posting to their respective social media accounts about a 9-1-1 outage for AT&T Wireless customers. Citizens with AT&T cellular service were unable to call 9-1-1 for emergency assistance for at least 2 hours. As early as 06:30am CST, social media accounts for 9-1-1 […]
As of June 7, 2019, 15 more agencies across the country have reported to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that they have successfully implemented Text-to-911 in their service areas. FCC: Text-to-911 PSAP Master Registry FCC rules require all wireless carriers and other providers of text messaging applications in the United States to deliver emergency texts […]
