Recently opened call center is put to the test

(After a tornado devastated the town of Greensburg, Kansas Friday night) Early Saturday, staff members were trying to track down a Greensburg family for a soldier who called from Afghanistan.

The center, with six dispatch consoles, an administrator's console and 20 phone lines, was created to serve as a backup for 911 systems in 19 counties and as a training center for new dispatchers through HCC. Each console includes at least three computer monitors - which on Saturday were tuned to weather loops, detailed maps of Greensburg and the emergency dispatch center - multi-line phones and large-screen televisions. Kiowa County is actually not one of the counties in the 19-county Homeland Security region, so it did not have a direct connection to the center. That had to be accomplished with the assistance of AT&T before the center went online about 3 a.m. Calls were being routed to the center through designated regular 7-digit phone lines.

During an emergency like that in Greensburg, the program manager will call in professional staff from area agencies, who will then go on a rotation, Ekberg said.

When not being used as an active emergency center, it will be used to train students in the emergency dispatch field, said Ron Hoffman, dispatch coordinator for HCC.

Equipment for the center was funded primarily through a $350,000 Homeland Security grant. Developers hope to obtain funding for a second phase "to establish connectivity," Abbot-Baker said.

"We want to be able to communicate in the field, by radio, IP, Internet, UHF, VHF, 800 megahertz lines, radio systems, pagers, text messaging, faxes, cell and land phones," Abbot-Baker said. 05/06/2007; 02:28:11 AM

Earlier this year another soldier in Afghanistan lost his parents to a Tornado in Oklahoma.

Names of the killed and injured have not been released to the public yet. This newspaper has several more articles and pictures of the tornado that destroyed Greensburg.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.