This article was obtained from www.firehouse.com on 20 October 2000
New Communications Center For Las Vegas - Posted: Wednesday, November 10, 1999 - 7:00 PM Tim Szymanski - Las Vegas Fire & Rescue
A new Fire & Rescue 9-1-1 Communications Center, which serves Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas went on line Monday evening. The Center is currently in a transition, with both the new and old Communications Centers on line. In case of a failure in the new Center, the old Center could still be used. The new Center is expected to be fully operational by mid-December.
The new Center is located in the Las Vegas Fire Headquarters building, the same location as the old Center. The new Center is unique in a number of ways. First, everything being used in the new Communications Center is completely brand new; new radio equipment, new computers and a new telephone system. The new systems are all fully Y2K compliant.
Another new feature is a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system called Tritech. What the CAD system does is to locate the closest available fire department unit to the location of the emergency regardless of its location in the Valley. The computers sees all fire equipment used by Clark County, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas to be that of one department. When the caller calls to report an emergency, Tritech immediately assigns the closest unit to the caller's locations. With the new system, it will be common place to see City units in the County and County units in the cities. The result is a quicker response. Currently technicians are working to remedy a few glitches in the system, mostly with street names, for example a street with "ROAD" is different than a street with "COURT" and the wrong unit may be assigned to the call. Fire Dispatchers are closely watching which units are being assigned and if the wrong unit is dispatched, Dispatcher can quickly correct it.
The phone system being used is new, which gives Dispatchers the location and phone number of the caller in most cases (cellular phones excluded). All of the work is done by computers. Even if the computers went off line, Dispatchers can still answer the phones and manually write down the address of the caller and sent aid. NO calls to the new Fire 9-1-1 Center have been lost since going on line.
Even though the Center is one of the most advanced in the country and extremely sophisticated, it still can have a few minor problems or glitches during the changeover. Technicians are on site, around the clock to fix anything that may go wrong. To ensure that no calls are missed, Dispatchers as still alerting firefighters in the fire stations by a radio loud speaker system to make sure they receive the call.
There is even a phone system as a backup in case the radios do not work. In case of a complete failure of the new Communications Center, the old Communications Center is still hooked up in the building, in within a few minutes, Dispatchers could move to the old Center and resume communications.
Computer Technicians, Phone Installers, Fire Dispatchers, Communications Experts and Fire Officials are working around the clock in the new Center to make it the best Communications Center in the country. A special open house and media tour is being planned for mid-December once all of the construction work, programming and other technical work is completed.