Communications Corner
By Geoff Galaski - St. Louis County Communications Department, Virginia
Cellular phones
There has been a lot of miss understanding on how cell phones work when you dial 911. Not all 911 cellular calls have the ability to give us GPS coordinates to the caller’s location. It has gotten better over the last few years, but still lacking. The ANI/ALI screen, the display we have when any 911 call is placed, only shows us the phone number and cell provider. If the cell phone provider has upgraded their cell towers to Phase II, then it is possible that we’ll receive GPS coordinates. If we are dealing with a “hot” call and need to know who owns the phone, we then must fax a form in to the cellular provider to request names and addresses.
We do receive calls from cell phones that currently don’t have a service plan. If you get a new cell phone and give the old ones to the kids to play with, please remove the battery or make sure the battery is drained. Why? Cellular phones can still place 911 calls even if they don’t have a cellular provider. It works just like the “911 phones” that are available only for calling 911. When these calls are received we get no information on our ANI/ALI screen except for which tower the signal is coming off of. That is not always trustworthy either. Our center has received 911 calls placed on cell phones from counties hundreds of miles away. Our Duluth center has even received calls from Michigan!
How does this affect my department? If your called to assist on a search and rescue call, we may have a pinpoint location or generalized area. GPS coordinates may vary from 1 mile to 100 feet of the caller’s physical location. Motor vehicle accidents are another example. In today’s world just about everybody has a cell phone. Passer-bys calling in the same accident or fire sometimes have totally different locations or descriptions of what is happening. We have taken 6 calls at the same time on a single incident and get 6 different versions of the incident.
Whether it’s a report of smoke in the area or a house fire, please be patient with your dispatch center and always remember that we don’t hold back information from you - we give you updates as we get them! We can only go by what the callers tell us. Unfortunately, all of our crystal balls are in for repairs!
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me!
Geoff Galaski
GalaskiG@co.st-louis.mn.us
I’ve had a few people ask that I write on this topic and how it affects dispatch as well as other fire/EMS units. As with most departments, you have your main dispatch channel that you receive calls from your 911 centers and then have tactical or “working channels”. What is the most frustrating part from the dispatcher’s point of view is the unnecessary radio chatter on the primary dispatch channel, especially when it is busy. We currently have 6 repeater towers to cover the northern part of our county. We do have the capability to transmit over someone talking but the person who is talking won’t hear us because their in transmit mode. How can we avoid this? Fire departments will have to have only one person acknowledge a page for the department. We don’t keep track of each specific unit responding to the call. If you need to know how many personnel are responding to the call, switch over to your tactical channel and talk with each other and coordinate who is taking what equipment. You may then say our “working channel” is not a repeater. We have 3 fire tactical repeater channels (similar to the dispatch channel) that can be used for this and general fire ground communications. On the fire scene, only the Incident Commander should be monitoring the dispatch channel. All other communications can be switched over to “working channels” and/or State Wide fire channel. Another issue is radio checks. Fire / EMS units should be considerate in doing radio checks. Please listen to the channel prior to doing a radio check. If it’s busy, can you perform radio checks on your “working channels” or hospital channel? All department members should be trained on radio communications and how your radios work. There is not enough training or it is over looked on properly training personnel, especially volunteer departments that have only a few calls a year. Spending 5 minutes every training session or meeting to cover radios will greatly help. Finally, a few last reminders. Remember to press the “talk button” for at least 5 seconds before you talk. This allows the radio to key up the tower and allow us to hear you and not cut off your identifier. Speak with the radio a few inches from your mouth and talk slowly and clearly. Talking fast won’t make the transmission get to us any faster! Radio communications is a major factor on the fire ground and EMS scene, especially when it comes to calling for help - “maydays”. Radio communications is a very important matter and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Tours of your dispatch center will familiarize you with how they operate. Coming from the fire service and working in dispatch has sure opened my eyes!
Please feel free to contact me at GalaskiG@co.st-louis.mn.us with your questions, comments, or ideas for future articles.
What
have we learned from 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina?
Congress has issued a failing grade when it comes to communications among public safety agencies. Why? What we have learned from 9/11 is that the NYPD (New York Police Department) and FDNY (Fire Department New York) didn’t establish a command post together because of their personal differences with each other. The firefighters and police officers couldn’t communicate with each other on their mobile or portable radios. Crucial information could have been relayed between the two agencies and more lives may have been saved. The departments now share a command post during emergencies but still are unable to communicate between each other. In New Orleans, the same thing occurred, firefighters were unable to talk directly to law enforcement or the National Guard during rescue operations. Some reasons for the incompatibility of radio systems are due to budget issues, turf battles and buying radio equipment to fit the specific needs of a department. No matter what the reason, unfortunately, there is no quick fix answer. Hopefully all of us can learn from these examples. If your department responds to a disaster, can you make radio contact with other agencies outside of your jurisdiction? Depending on the nature of the emergency you may have to communicate with the National Guard, FBI, State Patrol, NTSB, FEMA and other various Local, State, and Federal agencies. Messages or important information can be lost in translation or delayed if it has to go through a communication center. The ability to communicate directly with various agencies is crucial as we learn from 9/11 and Katrina. I urge your department to sit down and talk about these issues if you haven’t done so already or hold MCI drills. The knowledge of knowing how to communicate with outside agencies may be just as lifesaving as knowing CPR!
St.
Louis County 911?
Many
departments have questions and are not familiar with the operations of the St.
Louis County 911 Center in Virginia – a.k.a. “Midway”.
The center is staffed 24/7 with three dispatchers.
The staff includes 12 full-time and 4 part-time employees.
With 13 ambulance services, 46 fire departments, 29 first responder
units, and 16 law enforcement agencies it can get overwhelming at times.
Our agencies handle emergency and non-emergency calls for approximately
5,040 sq. miles, and also respond within surrounding counties.
Here are some common questions asked of us:
Why does it take some time for dispatchers to answer me when calling on the air?
We only have three dispatchers
to handle phone calls, Fire/EMS, and Law Enforcement radios.
If we have more than one 911 line or administration line ringing, we may
not be able to answer you right away. Always
wait for a dispatcher to acknowledge you before transmitting your message,
because they may be busy on the phone – the absence of radio traffic doesn’t
mean the dispatcher isn’t busy!
Why must I say “Anywhere Dept. to Midway”?
The
US DOT and IFSTA curriculum teaches Fire/EMS personnel to use the “hey you
it’s me” when calling someone on the radio.
Local policy, however, must be followed like any other protocol.
All the users agencies agreed upon identifying yourself first then
calling dispatch or another unit when the policy was written.
How does HIPPA affect dispatchers?
We
don’t give out the name of the patient over the air if at all possible.
As you know, in Northern MN, cell phone reception is not that great.
Sometimes the only way a department can find an address is by us giving
out the last name. Otherwise, we
ask the department to call us by phone to give out names, key locations and
blood borne pathogen information if applicable.
We are caught in the middle on this issue and have to tread carefully
when dealing with HIPPA and patient information.
How do mistakes occur with agencies being sent into another agency's service area?
When
a call is answered, the first question we ask the caller is “What is your
location?”. This believe it or
not is not always an easy answer. Most
callers don’t pay attention to what mile marker or nearest crossroad they
passed when they call 911. We then
ask questions to help us find their location and sometimes it’s our best
guess. Only a few cell phones have
GPS coordinates shown when they dial 911. Just
remember that we are using our best judgment and have patient care in mind when
deciding which agency(s) to send.
If
you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at any time GalaskiG@co.st-louis.mn.us.