By Kenneth Heard
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
MELBOURNE, Ark. — When Izard County Judge Rayburn Finley’s grandson was injured in a fourwheeler accident this summer, Finley instinctively dialed 911 on his cell phone.
But instead of reaching his county’s dispatch center some five miles away, Finley spoke with a dispatcher in neighboring Sharp County more than 25 miles away.
Because Izard County didn’t have a 911 service, cell-phone calls were diverted to surrounding counties.
Finley’s grandson was not seriously injured, but the response time for paramedics was delayed as Sharp County dispatchers had to call Izard County to send emergency help.
“He was OK,” said Finley, who lives in Zion. “But it took some time to get them here. If he was hurt worse, it would have been serious.” Now, though, the county has added Enhanced-911 service, allowing cell-phone users to contact local emergency personnel and receive quicker aid. Only two Arkansas counties Calhoun and Newton remain without the emergency service. Calhoun County in southern Arkansas plans on installing a 911 system in 2009. Newton County, one of the most rural northwestern Arkansas counties, has no plans for such a system, officials there said.
But in the rural northern Arkansas county where country roads snake through the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the service couldn’t have come sooner, Izard County Sheriff Tate Lawrence said.
“Our system before was nothing more than a telephone system with caller ID,” Lawrence said. “This system will give us mapping capabilities, and we’ll send that information to our deputies’ computers in their patrol cars.” Residential telephone users will be able to make 911 calls next year, he said.
“We’re a very rural county,” Lawrence said of the 13,249 who live there. “We’re challenged to protect the lives of everyone here. This will help us do that.” The county installed an AT&T Vesta Pallas 2.3 system in its dispatch center Sept. 11, using a $100,000 grant from the Arkansas Commercial Mobile Radio Services/Emergency System Telephone Board.
Cell-phone customers in Arkansas pay a 50-cent surcharge on their monthly bills to help fund the grants. The money is disbursed based upon needs to counties that apply for the grants, said dispatch center administrator Cindy Schaufler.
Izard County received its grant money earlier this year, Schaufler said. The Vesta system is stacked on a six-foot high metal rack in a storage room inside the sheriff’s office and jail.
AT&T representatives conducted field tests last month; cell-phone callers who have service with AT&T can already dial 911 and receive Izard County dispatchers. Other services, such as Sprint and Verizon, are expected to gain access by early 2009, Schaufler said.
Meanwhile, Finley is overseeing the county’s conversion to get addresses for every street and road in the county to be ready for the full 911 conversion.
“We’ll put every address on our Global Positioning Systems,” he said. “A lot of people have lived in [rural] areas here all their lives, and they’ve never had street addresses.
“This is going to be a huge benefit for every person in our county,” Finley said.
The county has more than 2,500 miles of gravel road, Lawrence said. There are only 10 deputies working for the sheriff’s office to protect nearly 550 square miles.
The system also incorporates Google Earth, an Internet program that incorporates a satellite mapping system to allow users to see aerial photographs of land. The system could have come in handy earlier this spring when deputies were delayed in responding to a vehicular accident because the caller could not pinpoint its location.
A car traveling on Arkansas 56 left the road one night in April, Lawrence said. A woman spotted the accident and dialed 911 on her cell phone.
The woman saw a road sign indicating the Izard County town of Franklin was ahead and she mistakenly thought she was already in Franklin. Her emergency call went to Sharp County, where dispatchers then forwarded the information to Izard County.
After searching Franklin, Izard County deputies finally found that the accident occurred across the county line in Sharp County, about eight miles east of Franklin.
The driver was not injured, but had he been, the time spent sorting out the accident’s location would have been critical, Lawrence said.
Four dispatchers rotate 12-hours shifts at the Izard County dispatch center. A part-time employee and a jailer help during busy times, Schaufler said. The center averages only seven to 10 calls per shift, she said. But each call could be a life-or-death situation, and time is critical, she added.
“In the past, we’ve had people call and say, `I don’t know where I’m really at,’” Schaufler said. “They may be nervous, or hurt or excited. We can pinpoint their calls without them stuttering around.” County officials say the system would have also benefited residents in February, when a tornado packing winds in excess of 100 miles per hour ripped through the center of the county. Two people were killed when the Feb. 5 twister struck Zion; the storm moved into Ash Flat and Highland, destroying many businesses and tying up dispatchers for hours.
“It was total confusion,” Finley said of the emergency response. “It was awful. A lot of the [cell phone] towers were downed, but some people could call out.” He said he drove the rural roads around Zion, using a chain saw to cut toppled trees out of the way for ambulance and emergency personnel.
With the new system, Finley said, lives could be saved if another tornado strikes the area.
“We’ll be able to pinpoint people now,” he said. “It will be one step further in helping our people.
“It will eliminate a lot of confusion,” he added. “Before, when someone called in, we would try to get them to describe their location as best they could. The problem was enhanced at night, when everything looks the same. Now we can get there quicker, and we’ll definitely save lives.”
Copyright 2008 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.