ECCs use Prepared to stay connected during 911 outages

Note: this article first appeared in our bi-weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, Evolving Emergencies. Click here to subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn.

911 outages can happen anywhere, at any time. What matters isn't asking why or how, it's asking, "what are we doing to do about it?" For Prepared partners, that answer has quickly become: use Prepared Live. Here's two examples:

Carbon County and Schuylkill County (PA)

Last week, 16 counties in Pennsylvania were affected by a 911 outage when a tree fell and damaged fiber optic cables that carried landline call traffic. While many of these 16 counties were severely limited by the outage, Carbon County and Schuylkill County had a solution.

Both agencies leveraged RapidSOS to see the incoming phone numbers and Prepared to communicate with the emergent caller. Gary Williams, Director of Carbon County 9-1-1, said, "Answering calls through Prepared...allows us to dispatch quickly – most importantly answer calls while lines are down with most cell carriers not getting through to 911."

Before Carbon and Schuylkill, however, another Pennsylvania county and telecommunicator had leveraged this innovative solution for the same purpose...

Fayette County (PA)

"During the evening of March 3, 2023, heavy wind gusts led to widespread power outages across Fayette County. An outage in the City of Uniontown caused a power disruption at the Fayette County 911 Center. During this 60-minute time period, callers may have received a busy signal when dialing 911.

"Telecommunicators were not able to make contact via phone with these callers. However, the Center was still able to see the calls coming into 911 through Prepared Live and RapidSOS. It was then that a telecommunicator suggested that we start texting these callers back and verify if they indeed had an emergency.

Until our incoming 911 calls were rerouted to our back up number, we were texting via Prepared Live for each 911 call that came into our center. We found this to be extremely useful when no other form of communication with the callers was available." - Jodie Victor, 911 Operations Manager

--

Great work by Carbon County, Schuylkill County, and Fayette County and their dedicated telecommunicators!

Thank you for reading another edition of Evolving Emergencies! If you'd like to bring this solution to your agency, let us know by clicking here or emailing joshk@prepared911.com

Not ready to make the leap but want to learn more? Check out these Case Studies:

• Crockett County Uses Prepared to Enhance T-CPR
• Prepared Increases Law Enforcement and Victim Safety During Domestic Incidents
• LETA911 Uses Prepared to Determine Wildfire Response

And don't forget to subscribe to Evolving Emergencies!