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New 911 system should make fire, police runs safer and faster

HANCOCK COUNTY, Ind. (WISH) – Hancock County now has a new 911 dispatch system that county officials say should cut down on emergency response time, while making first responders’ jobs safer.

The system is called Interact 911. It’s a computer aided dispatch or CAD system. The county’s old system was about 25 years old, and the emergency operations director John Jokantas told 24-Hour News 8 it was on the verge of becoming unusable.

The new system should help dispatchers, because it automatically tells them what units to send when someone calls 911. It also connects Hancock County with surrounding agencies. Jokantas said Interact 911 tells dispatchers more about the area surrounding the call, so first responders know exactly what they’re getting into when they arrive.

The mapping abilities are far superior to the old system, according to Jokantas. Dispatchers can monitor first responders and watch them as they are going to and from emergency calls.

“We also get more pin point mapping when a 911 call is received, the map automatically pinpoints to that location. So we can see it on the map. It’s a full map, so we can see where tress are, where houses are, we can see colors of houses and things like that,” said Jokantas.

The Sugar Creek Fire Department is one agency that will experience a big difference with the new system.

Interact 911 allows firefighters in the trucks to communicate with the 911 dispatchers all via computer. Before, they’d have to talk to them over the radio. Sometimes that can get garbled and hard to understand. Now, everything they need to know is right in front of them.

The system automatically uploads everything that the dispatchers are learning from the 911 call, so police and fire crews with computers can see it instantly.

First responders can also see everything that’s going on in the county, including all the other incidents that police or fire crews are dealing with.  Firefighters said it makes them more situationally aware when they’re showing up to a run.

Sugar Creek Fire Department is still in the 30 day trial period, so they’re using the radio and the computer systems to make sure everything works.  Firefighters said they can already tell the new system will make them much faster.

“It absolutely improves our response time, it allows us to get runs sooner than they would be able to dispatch it out over the radio. We’ve had times where we’ve been in the trucks, and we’ve been able to see the run come out before they even hit us on the radio to dispatch us,” said Tony Bratcher with Sugar Creek Fire Department.

Dispatchers can also now send first responders information via computers, like garage door codes or special hazards they might run into while responding to a call.