In late 2001, a couple from Columbus traveled to Southeast Ohio for a short retreat in one of Hocking County's cabins. The husband had made all the plans and drove them to their location. During their stay, the husband suffered a medical emergency. Using her cellular phone, his wife called 911 for help.
However, the woman was unsure of her exact location and was not able to communicate it to the 911 dispatcher. For more than an hour and a half, the dispatcher spoke with the woman while emergency vehicles circled the county, attempting to find her cabin. They were unable to find the cabin in time, and the man died.
This incident began a chain of events that led to the implementation of a Phase II wireless plan in Hocking County, which allows a 911 dispatcher to see the location of a cell phone caller.
I don't want to put these people through this again. We have to fix this
Brent Runge, director of operations of Hocking County 911, said of the decision to spend $250,000 to upgrade their system to be able to handle the Phase II system.
However, Hocking County is one of only two counties in Ohio with a Phase II program up and running. While Athens County 911 has much of the technology needed to be Phase II compatible, it is not operating a Phase II system because of a lack of finances, said Doug Bentley, chief of operations for Athens County Emergency Communications.
Developed by the Federal Communications Commission and sponsored by the National Emergency Number Association, in partnership with other organizations, the Wireless Implementation Plan works in two stages.
Hocking County began installing the new technology in March 2002 and completed Phase I by that December. Phase I lets dispatchers receive the cell phone number and the location of the antenna that received the call.
By June 2003, Hocking County was using their Phase II technology to identify the location of cell phone callers.
Phase II works in two ways to identify the location of a wireless caller, Runge said. One method transfers information on the signal strength of the cell from multiple towers to a computer, which then gives the dispatcher a vector from where the call is coming. The other uses the Global Positioning System chip that is in the handset of most new cell phones, which provides a data stream to the 911 computers, giving the longitude and latitude of the caller.
Hocking County 911 is equipped with both methods because different cell phone companies give them different kinds of data to process, Runge said. While the Phase II system is only about 85 to 90 percent accurate, it is leaps and bounds better than anything we've had to endure previously.
In Athens County, the location of landline callers to 911 will appear to the dispatcher, but the location of any callers using a cell phone is not traceable.
Bentley said the call will show as coming from a cell phone, so dispatchers know they must get the person's location.
The main reason most 911 centers have not instituted the Phase II technology is because of the high cost of implementation. A bill that recently passed in the Ohio House of Representatives and is now in the Senate will allow for cell phone companies and Public Safety Answering Points to receive money from a surcharge paid by cell phone users.
Carol Armitage, the Ohio chapter president of the NENA, said Ohio is one of only a few states in the United States currently without funding mechanisms in place for the Phase II technology. Because of this, Ohio lags behind many states in how many counties are operating Phase II.
Athens County recently spent $36,000 to upgrade their 911 system to be compatible with the new technology but do not yet have the money to subscribe to the cell phone database service, Bentley said.
We have all our pieces in place ready and waiting he said.
According the FCC's Web site, a roll-out schedule for Phase II implementation should be completed by the end of 2005.
With about 60 percent of all calls to Athens County 911 made from wireless telephones, Bentley said locating callers is a problem they constantly deal with.
It's an issue that we deal with every single day
he said. Every single day dispatchers are coaxing location information to figure out where people are at.
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Mary Fraley, who lives in Hocking County, monitors an emergency situation from the Hocking County E-911 headquarters in Logan Sunday afternoon. Fraley has been working with Hocking County E-911 since its opening in 1999 and is experienced with the new tec
