Tennessee State 911 Network and Texting
Over the last couple of years, the Tennessee Emergency Communications Board (TECB) has been working with AT&T to implement a statewide 911 network interconnecting all 911 Centers together. This will allow for emergency re-routing of 911 calls in the event of major disasters. Additionally, this system will provide statistics from each 911 district to the TECB. Sullivan County 911 went online as part of this network in February 2021.
Now that we are part of the state network, we have requested installation of texting to 911 for Sullivan County. Sullivan County 911 has been installed and is operational in early 2022.
Keeping Current
In January of 2020, Sullivan County 911 installed a major upgrade to our call taking equipment. Then in March of 2020, our mapping systems were upgraded with new server hardware and the latest software versions. Our Board of Directors work very hard to ensure Sullivan County 911 uses the best equipment available to serve our citizens. 911 is a lifeline for each resident, business, and visitor in our area and we take that responsibility very seriously.
Emergency Back Up
The 2020 Christmas Day bombing in Nashville taught public safety and 911 centers many lessons. One of the biggest for our industry is the need for multiple system redundancies to ensure coverage during a disaster of any kind. As the bomb struck the main AT&T building in downtown multiple 911 outages began to occur across middle and west Tennessee. Thankfully, the cooperation of multiple agencies and companies working with the centers helped to keep 911 calls from going unanswered.
After the bombing, locally we began working on plans for additional redundancy in our Sullivan County 911 dispatching systems. One step we are taking is assembling a backup communications center that could be brought into service quickly to provide for 911 call taking and public safety dispatching. This backup communications center is in a separate location away from the main center and should be operational by Spring 2022.
Currently, we have alternating routing of 911 calls and dispatching services in place with another local 911 agency. If both centers are not impaired by the same incident, this rerouting provides for a quick solution.