(Spirit Lake)–It’s been about a year now since Dickinson county switched over to a new 911 radio system that not only serves law enforcement, EMS, fire and other emergency personnel in the county, but also is being used by schools and the county’s Secondary Roads Department. Dickinson County Emergency Management Coordinator Mike Ehret (air-it) says the new system, part of the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System, or ISICS, has been flawless, with extremely better coverage than the old system. And, he says, it’s getting a lot of use…
“We’ve had since January one, 175,418 of what we call push to talks or that’s when an officer keys up the radio so that’s an average of 662 per day or 28 per hour that the officers, schools, everybody that’s on our roads department is using the system.”
Ehret adds the system is compatible with Minnesota’s communication system…
“So, if we do across the border whether we’re going to a call or maybe a pursuit goes into Minnesota we’ll have access to their radio system so that we can continue to communicate with them. We do have two fire districts that go into Minnesota, Lake Park and Spirit Lake. We do go up there occasionally and then offer mutual aid. Lake Park is up at Round Lake multiple times over in that area so we’ll be able to communicate with MN, and I think they’re working on hopefully being able to put our system in their radio so that if they come down here, same thing so they can talk to us on our system.”
The Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted to close out the multi-million dollar project now that all of the equipment is installed and is functioning as intended.
