By Aaron Applegate
The Virginian-Pilot
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Rebecca Hooker, a 911 dispatcher, watched two red squares inch across a city map on her computer. One square was a fire truck, the other an ambulance. They were heading north on Diamond Springs Road, driving toward Air Rail Drive where a possible heart-attack victim was waiting.
Six months ago, dispatchers couldn’t keep real-time tabs on vehicles.
“We’d have to call and ask,” Hooker said.
The technology is part of a sophisticated — and some say slow-moving — $1.7 million plan to overhaul the way the city’s police, fire and emergency medical services departments respond to emergencies.
The idea is to equip the city’s 450 public safety vehicles with GPS units and computer mapping capabilities that would instantaneously pick the best route to an emergency. Workers use paper maps now. A few bring their personal GPS devices to work to navigate the city’s 7,400 streets and 3,500 road miles.
Some City Council members say it’s taken too long to get basic GPS service in vehicles. The target date for the new system is next June.
“This has been a Rolls Royce solution to a Ford problem,” said Councilman Bill DeSteph, who walked out of a Tuesday meeting in disgust when he learned it would be another year before the system would be finished.
“We’re trying to make it sound so difficult when it’s simple.”
DeSteph and Councilman Jim Wood said the city could have installed commercial GPS devices in vehicles years ago when the council first asked to update the fleet’s technology.
“Every year we ask about it and it’s, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’” Wood said.
“We could have bought a thousand Garmins and replaced them five times,” he said, citing a top GPS company.
Emergency service officials share the frustration but say the new technology will be worth the wait.
“Am I frustrated? Sure,” EMS Division Chief Tom Green said. “Of course we want it and we want it now, but once you get through the pain of two or three years to get it right, it will be right.”
After pilot studies of commercial GPS devices in 2005, emergency service leaders said they weren’t good enough.
EMS Chief Bruce Edwards explained in a 2007 memo that they “had several shortcomings that rendered them much less reliable than the map books we currently use,” citing the lack of new city roads and poor route choices.
“You couldn’t get a real-time update,” Green said, adding that with the coming system, new streets will be updated automatically.
While most responders know the main streets well, officials said, confusion can arise in apartment or condominium projects where lots of small roads and multiple unit numbers can increase response time.
Jeff Menger, a city Geographic Information Systems analyst, pointed to an apartment complex displayed on a computer in a city police car he’s using to test the system. Each unit was numbered, and the small roads in the complex were displayed to show clear routes.
“You’re not going to get that with a Garmin,” he said.
The map also showed the location of all fire hydrants.
“So if the first truck goes to the right and there’s a hydrant there, but we need a secondary hydrant, I can see it,” said Steve Lesinski, a Fire Department battalion chief.
Councilman Wood said he’s not against the system, just the waiting.
“It’s a great idea. However, it’s been seven years since we asked for them to come up with something,” Wood said. “I have absolutely no confidence it will be delivered on time.”
Councilman Ron Villanueva said he wished commercial GPS units had been installed as a stop-gap measure while the new system was being developed. “If council gave better direction,” he said, “we wouldn’t be here today, so what you have is a bunch of finger-pointing.”
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