County asks Congress to help revamp 911 system
Flathead officials seek $5.81 million to improve, consolidate emergency dispatch
The Flathead area's 911 officials are seeking $5.81 million from Congress to overhaul the local emergency dispatch systems.
A letter making that request was sent in late January to U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., by Turner Askew, chairman of the Flathead City-County 911 Administrative Board's long-range planning committee.
The letter was sent just before a Jan. 31 federal deadline to make such requests for the 2007 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
This week, Congress received the Bush administration's budget request for fiscal 2007 - a request that will go through numerous committees and changes. Burns is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The 911 Board hopes that Flathead area's governments and fire departments will send letters of support for the $5.81 million by the March 2 deadline.
The board is looking at revamping a sometimes unwieldy and confusing emergency-dispatch network spread across separate centers in the county Sheriff's Office, Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls.
The board's request to Congress asks for:
-$2.74 million for the hardware, software and training to create a 911 system that can handle all the area's fire, police and emergency service departments.
-$2.57 million for radio equipment and mobile data equipment for the 911 dispatch center and among first responders in the county to improve their speed and coordination in emergencies. n $500,000 for planning a new independent and central emergency communications center for Flathead County.
Currently, Flathead County has four 911 dispatch centers.
Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls each have a 911 center to handle only police calls within their city limits. The Flathead County Sheriff's Office supervises the fourth 911 center, which handles all city and rural fire and emergency calls, plus all law-enforcement calls outside of the three cities.
Problems exist with the main 911 center's dispatchers handling fire, ambulance and administrative duties in addition to dispatching sheriff's deputies.
In December, the board hired Lisa Durand of rural Flathead County as a consultant to study what should be changed in the area's 911 setups.
Durand has more than 20 years of experience in emergency dispatch services, with the majority of that time as a top-ranking official in several cities before she moved to Montana to start a small business. She is required to have a report of her findings completed by April 15.
"I found there is good support for a consolidated 911 center. … We're making our dispatchers work a little harder than we need to," Durand said.
On Tuesday, Durand briefed the 911 Board on some preliminary observations, including:
. There are many radio and cell phone dead spots in rural Flathead County.
-When callers' addresses show up on the dispatchers' computer screens, there is no accompanying information about which police or fire department is responsible for that location. That leads to slower response times while dispatchers look up who is the proper responding agency.
. The centers received a high number of calls that hang up before the phone lines can transmit the callers' locations to the dispatchers' computers.
-When a 911 center transfers a call to another 911 center, time is lost because a caller has to explain the emergency twice to dispatchers.
-The sheriff's dispatchers listen to five channels of radio traffic for the county fire departments. That should be consolidated into one channel, she said.