(Spirit Lake)– Dickinson county’s conversion to a new 911 radio system is now complete. Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret gave an update at today’s (Tues.) Board of Supervisors meeting. He says the county has about 535 radios operating on the new system, known as the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System, or ISICS…
“We switched over law enforcement to the new system on January 13th; we switched over fire and EMS on the 20th. So we got everybody moved over to the new system prior to Winter Games. Everything I’ve heard back from the responders and dispatch has been very positive. Everything seems to be working better than expected.”
Ehret says the new system is already showing improvements over the old one…
“One example, Terril Rescue, they told me now they can call in patient reports on the radio from inside the house. They don’t have to leave a patient, go out to the ambulance, get on the radio there to call the other ambulance that’s coming or call dispatch. They can do it right there from inside the house, so.”
He adds Winter Games provided a real test for the new system…
“The four days, Thursday through Sunday, there was 4,170 what we call push to talks. That’s when somebody keyed up a radio and talked on it, so 4,170 times that happened. There was 10 and-a-half hours of air time over that four day period. Now I have nothing to compare that to because it’s the first time we’ve been able to get stats from this sort of thing but that’s a lot of radio use. That was kind of our first big test and I would say we passed. We had two goals: we wanted to improve coverage and we wanted to have more capacity with the system and we got both of those things, so.”
In addition to law enforcement and fire and EMS, the Dickinson County Secondary Roads Department and the schools in the county are also using the new system.
