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Countyıs enhanced 911 system moving forward By DAWN SLADE Mille Lacs County is getting closer to implementing the enhanced 911 system. To help emergency personnel locate homes more easily and quickly, 911 coordinator Bettse McNeil has been using global positioning satellite (GPS) technology to create a GIS (global information system) base map for the county. Rural roads in the county were the focus for the GIS base map and employees will now focus on the individual rural parcels. In order to ensure accurate addressing, residents may receive a card in the mail from the county requesting additional information. The county also requests that residents include either their name or their address on their mail box. McNeil said, ³I canıt stress enough how much help I need in getting addresses on these mail boxes. Itıs total guess work on some of these parcels. ³Most of the time, if they just had the address on the mail box, it would help for at least half of the questions I have.² Never before has the county been able to link the legal description, the parcel i.d., the address, and the homeownerıs name together. Once the technology is in place, dispatchers will have a map on the computer screen with an arrow that will point to the location on the map so they know exactly where to send emergency response personnel. Mille Lacs County Sheriff Brent Lindgren said, ³The enhancement to the 911 communications, the mapping portion of that, will enhance the ability of the telecommunicators to accurately get ambulance, fire and police to the 911 locations more timely than before.² Lindgren spoke of the difficulty emergency personnel have in finding addresses, particularly in the rural areas. ³In a life saving situation, three to five minutes can be the difference between life and death,² Lindgren added. And though Mille Lacs County was one of the first to go to the enhanced 911 system, Lindgren said Mille Lacs is one of the last to actually get the address markers in place. Those markers are not in place yet, however. Lindgren said that he considers phase one of the process to be the mapping, phase two to be assigning a GPS to each driveway and phase three will be physically putting the markers in place at each driveway. The county anticipates the markers to be in place in approximately one year. ³Having the address markers up, especially at night, will be beneficial to the emergency personnel,² Lindgren added. Lindgren is hopeful that eventually mobile units will be located in emergency response vehicles in order for personnel to pull up the map en route. Sherburne, Anoka, and Benton counties already have these systems in place in emergency vehicles. The county is paying for the enhanced system through the 911 surcharges that are on telephone bills.
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