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St. Paul Tests 911 Text Messaging System

ST. PAUL (WCCO) ― Everywhere you go, you see people sending and receiving text messages and using the Internet to communicate. But you can't use these high-tech tools to communicate with 911 centers ... yet.

That could change some day. St. Paul is one of five U.S. cities taking part in a federal government project testing these types of tools for the future.

The current 911 system in this country is pretty much the same as it was when it was created 40 years ago. If you need an ambulance for a medical emergency or an officer to report a crime, the first thing you do is pick up a phone and dial 911.

"The way we do that today is simply by voice. We just repeat what the caller told us and try to summarize or repeat it to someone else," said Pete Eggimann, director of 911 services for the Metropolitan Emergency Services Board.

As part of a U.S. Department of Transportation project, St. Paul is testing high-tech tools that could make a big difference in how you communicate with its 911 center and how fast and accurate your information is passed on to a hospital, an officer or firefighter.

A WCCO news crew recently watched a presentation by a consultant working with the DOT on the research and design of proposed system. The goal: to someday allow callers needing help to use lots of high-tech methods -- including text messaging and voice over Internet systems -- to communicate with 911 call centers.

The upgraded system would allow information from the person asking for help to be immediately and directly connected to people in other parts of the emergency response network.

According to consultant Gordon Vanauken, "by delivering the information directly to people that need to use that information, the quality of care is going to increase."

The 911 system of the future would also allow someone with an emergency to feed video of a crash, a fire or a crime in progress.

"We would actually be able to send that video directly to the squad cars that are responding to the location so that they would be able to see what's going on inside a building," said Eggimann.

He added it would also help fire fighters coordinate their responses better.

"It is one thing to tell the fire department that there's a building on a fire. It is thing for the fire chief to be able to see that fire and make a professional opinion on exactly what equipment he needs and where he needs to get it."

The testing in the five cities ends in November. It is expected to be several years before a high-tech 911 network will be up and running. To learn more about the proposals on the upgraded systems, head over to the DOT Web site.

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