Jackson County Enhanced 911
E-911 Coordinator
Craig Bowles
Jackson County is in the process of converting from Basic 911 to E911. This has been a long and slow process, but will benefit the citizens of Jackson County greatly. At the present time Jackson County is operating a Basic 911 system which is basically only caller I.D. with name and number delivery. We rely on the caller to give the directions to the incident.
When the E911 system is up and going there will be a CAD(Computer Aided Dispatch) system in place, we will know who is calling, where they are calling from, and directions to their location.
The E911 system stores the info so when another call comes from a location that has called before the Dispatchers will automatically know the history of incidents at that location.
For instance if someone calls in that is having chest pains and they have called 911 with shortness of breath at an earlier date then that info will show up on the Dispatcher's computer screen.
The E911 system will save valuable time in life saving emergencies. It usually takes two to three minutes to get directions from a caller. That amount of time could mean life or death.
Hopefully with no more setbacks the system will be up and running by summer 2009.