AUGUSTA, Maine — Although cellphone use has become more prevalent over the past decade, the way 911 calls are handled from cellular customers largely has remained the same.
That’s beginning to change.
When cellphones first started appearing in the 1990s, the Maine State Police, instead of local police and county sheriff’s departments, agreed to take 911 cellphone calls. Land-line emergency calls still would be taken by local police and county sheriff’s departments.
However, the method of how 911 calls are made has shifted dramatically over the past dozen years.
“The growth of cellular phones has just skyrocketed,” said Cliff Wells, director of the state’s Consolidated Emergency Communications Bureau.
“Over the last 10 or 12 years, we’ve really seen an increase. The ratios [are now] 60-40 — 60 percent are 911 calls from cellphones,” said Rob Bickford, Lincoln County 911 Communications Center supervisor.
Bickford said that for police agencies that don’t have a public safety answering point, or PSAP, 911 cellphone calls are sent to one of four Maine Department of Public Safety centers in the state.
There are 26 PSAPs in the state.
Some of the larger police departments — such as Bangor, Lewiston-Auburn and Portland — handle their own 911 calls, said Bickford.
“[The Department of Public Safety] gets the call, finds out where it is, takes the basic info and then transfers it to the appropriate [police agency],” said Bickford. “That’s a delay of 30-45 seconds per call.”
Karen Gerrity of the Maine Public Utilities Commission said county sheriffs’ departments are on a schedule to have 911 cellphone calls in their area come directly to them instead of having those calls routed to a PSAP and then to the sheriff’s department.
The Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department is now undergoing that process, she said. Right now, most cellular 911 calls from that county go to an emergency call center in Orono.
“We’re hoping to be done with all the transition and rerouting by January 2014,” said Gerrity.
The time saved in having that call processed once instead of twice can make a big difference for someone in an emergency, said Tim Pellerin, director of the Lincoln County 911 Communications Center.
“It saves the caller those precious seconds or even minutes to get the help that they need,” he said.
Gerrity said cutting down on transfers was a big reason for the change. The local and county departments also were asking to have their calls sent directly to them.
Lincoln County was the pilot county for the project. It started receiving all of its 911 calls from cellphones back in 2004.
“Our workloads increased, but it was a gradual increase,” said Pellerin. “We were very fortunate. Back then, one in every 30 people had a cell phone. Today, one in every two, if not everyone has one.”
Gerrity said agencies across the state will slowly begin having emergency cellphone calls come to them.
“For any agency that doesn’t get any 911 cell calls [now], there’s going to be quite a big increase depending on population,” said Bickford.
A major reason for the gradual change is to make sure the local and county agencies can handle the call volume.
The cellphone companies in the state are working to make the switch, said Gerrity.
“We’re doing one carrier at a time,” she said.
Spokesmen for Verizon and U.S. Cellular said they are working with the state to gradually implement the changes in the handling of emergency 911 cellphone calls.
I was told in my most recent first aid class if ever given the option between a land-line and a cell phone when calling 911 to always use the land line because the dispatcher on the other end will have an immediate location vs. having to ask your address. One would think that with most cell phones having GPS built into them, this would help alleviate that concern, and the location of the cell phone could be tracked easier.
But, like the article states, many people are getting rid of their land lines… I know that we have, and when we had to call 911 last month when our son was having febrile seizures, I had to give them our physical address before they could contact the correct area ambulance to come to our house. I am not sure how long it necessarily took, but at the time it seemed to be taking forever for them to get here! Hopefully this will help speed up that process….
The GPS function may help, but tower location and availability are key in a proper location plotting. Very rarely do cell phone calls give the actual location, and many times give the tower’s location instead of the caller’s if only one tower picks up the call. We have had calls that plot on one end of the county but are almost on the other side, or in a neighboring county. Even with a land line 911 call you will be asked to verify the address of the emergency because some towns have not provided their addresses, or the phone company enters a number wrong..it happens. Also people call 911 to get help for other people at different locations (we had a call the other day where the person called about a friend in Florida who told her that she overdosed) so assuming the emergency is at the address that pops up isn’t a given.
That was what I had thought — in regards to cell towers VS GPS. I never thought about the idea of some one calling for some one else either. Thanks for the response!
I don’t see how this could or would be a big problem for cell phone companies. They already know and send signals back and forth between the tower and the cell phone, and can locate a phone off a tower. Just direct calls for 911 from that tower to the local police department, or call center. A simple switch. If a tower covers two or more towns, which town do you call, but the equipment already has to determine which cell or BTS a phone is in off of a tower for it to make a phone call anyway, have the call routed to the station, town, or emergency center based on which BTS a phone is in? Ok, getting the switch may be the problem…..
It is not like VoIP where it is node based, or section of the network. Which emergency center do you call if a node covers more than one town, but there can be a database of numbers within a node to check against before determining which emergency center to send the call to. Now it needs to be redundant enough to work without the power company to be certifiable.
A little bit of common sense. I love it. Now we just need to keep politics and power grabs out of it and this may be a valuable change for the better.
Sorry, can’t be done today.
After making one 911 call from a cellphone about a purely local incident in which I had some additional information that may have saved a life, and getting the run-around I got from someone who didn’t have any idea what was going on, I put the local dispatch number in my address book and will call them direct from now on.
It’s a waste of valuable time. You call 911 from your cell phone, and recieve the State Police dispatcher. They ask you the basic questions. Then they transfer you to the proper agency (hopefully, sometimes calls get transferred to the wrong agency, which wastes even more time), and when that agency answers the phone, the State Police dispatcher talks to that dispatcher before putting through the actual caller. Then, the agency you are transferred to is REQUIRED to ask you the same questions all over again (because believe it or not, in the midst of all the transferring, incorrect information has been given by the original dispatcher answering the call), then they must dispatch the proper response. Most people are highly irritated by the time they finally reach the proper agency because of the circus they had to go through to get there, that they don’t/won’t answer all the questions that ensure they get the proper emergency response and pre-arrival help they need.
A LOT of other states have been having their 911 cell calls routed directly to the proper agency since the 90’s…it’s about time Maine gets with the program!
This is good news. The only reason I’ve continued to have a land line is because I wanted to ensure that I had a direct link to my local 911 system. Now I can get rid of it and save 40 bucks a month.
I bet Fairpoint’s not happy about this. lol