New system aids 911 center in sending help

Public safety telecommunicators at the Rice Steele 911 Center now have a new tool to aid them in getting police, fire and EMS services out to the public more rapidly than ever before.

Within the past month, the local center began using Rapid Deploy, which is new public safety software aimed at unifying public safety workflow and reducing emergency response times.

“Rapid Deploy is computer technology that provides us with logistical information to determine your exact location,” said Jill Bondus, director of the Rice Steele 911 Center. “This will assist us in locating 911 callers.”

The center, Bondhus said, receives its “fair share” of 911 calls every year in which the callers are challenged in knowing their exact location. Sometimes it may be young children at grandma’s house where they don’t know the address while other times it may be motorists traveling through the area not knowing where they’re at.

Last year the center handled 178,987 emergency and non-emergency calls, according to Bondhus.

Rapid Deploy is the first of its kind in Minnesota offering modern mapping and analytics to emergency response. The system’s capability simply gives telecommunicators more accurate location of an emergency caller.

While all 911 centers in the state have the capability of utilizing Rapid Deploy, the Rice Steele center is the first in Minnesota to make it operational, Bondhus said. She noted Rapid Deploy is just one of 20 systems that interface together for telecommunicators to utilize when receiving a 911 call.

“We still need callers to know their location,” Bondhus said. “But in the event they cannot provide information, this will be a tool to help locate them,” she added.

Bondus calls Rapid Deploy a “very valuable tool” for the dispatch center. “It will reduce the amount of time it takes to get services to them,” she said, noting in public safety time is everything.

“It saves time for citizens who need assistance and help with quicker emergency response.”

The system will also provide translational services for non-English speaking people who utilize texting for emergencies. Faster response will be provided through automatically translated text messages.

Rapid Deploy has been made available through a state grant and came at no additional cost to the local center, Bondhus said.