By John Snell
The Oregonian
HILLSBORO, Ore. — You may not have noticed it, but last month Washington County saved millions of dollars upgrading its 9-1-1 dispatching.
It did it by switching to a system run by counterparts in Clackamas County.
Clackamas County originally spent between $6 million and $7 million to replace its badly outdated dispatch system with a modern bigger one, said Mark Spross, technical services manager for Clackamas County Communications. The county’s new system was built in 1994 and upgraded in 2002.
Spross said the county accepted $885,000 in federal money to make its system available to any public safety agency in the region. Washington County signed on, rather than spend millions on its own system.
Each agency must pay the full cost of any equipment needed to plug into the Clackamas County dispatching system, plus pay a share of future upgrades and maintenance, Spross said.
Washington County made the switch at 5:34 a.m. June 30. The combined load of dispatching in Clackamas and Washington counties only uses about 15 percent of the system’s capacity, Spross said.
“The capacity is huge,” said Kelly Dutra, spokeswoman for Washington County’s Consolidated Communications Agency. “The savings is in the cost of the system itself.”
When the public phones 9-1-1 for help, a call-taker answers the phone and passes along information to a dispatcher, who in turn sends police, firefighters or ambulance attendants. Dutra said the new computer system makes sure information is transferred efficiently between the call-taker and the dispatcher.
The system also connects the dispatch center with mobile computers in police cars, fire trucks and ambulances in the field.
And the benefits don’t end there. People living in Wilsonville, for example, are served by the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office when they call for police, and Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue — based in Washington County — when they need a firefighter.
Under the new system, information can automatically appear on dispatch screens in both 9-1-1 centers because they share the same computer dispatching system. The shared system will also let one county’s 9-1-1 center handle calls for the other, if an emergency forces one center to close temporarily.
Dutra said it would take about two weeks for Washington County’s 9-1-1 center to become as proficient using the new system as it was with the old one.
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