Penobscot County to get E-911 today

It’s a desperate call for help, a woman is having a heart attack in the middle of the night and in the midst of all the turmoil, she’s forgotten where she lives.

Precious minutes pass as dispatchers learn little more than that she remembers one of her neighbors was taken to the hospital three weeks earlier. Tracing ambulance records, paramedics were able to locate the woman in a roundabout way, 50 minutes after she first called.

And although the woman in this medical emergency survived, reducing response time for police or paramedics can make the difference between life and death.

Enter the Enhanced 911 service, which is now winding its way through the state and is expected to be implemented in nearly all of Penobscot County sometime today. Lincoln Fire Chief Bill Lee said that E-911 is not expected to be ready to run Tuesday.

With E-911 in place, emergency dispatchers will have the address of the callers right away, no caller ID blocking, no waiting for a trace to be completed which can take 20 minutes or more.

“We’re going to get a start on things that much quicker,” said Michael Azevedo, telecommunications officer with the Penobscot Regional Communications Center, which serves as emergency dispatch for all but Bangor, Old Town and Lincoln in Penobscot County. Life is measured in minutes when someone has stopped breathing.

“It definitely will save lives, we know that,” said Deputy Chief Robert Welch of the Bangor Police Department.

It can also help firefighters find the fire scene quicker and police find the location of a crime faster.

Enhanced 911 picks up the phone caller’s address, even when the call is disconnected, whether by the caller, someone else or acts of nature as a Lebanon man discovered last spring when a fire in his home burned the telephone wire and abruptly curtailed his 911 call before he could give the dispatcher directions. Firefighters arrived within minutes, saving the home.

The system also works when authorities suspect a crime is occurring, but the caller cannot or does not remain on the line.

Azevedo said in one case, a woman called the regional center, but spit out her address three times fast and couldn’t be understood by the dispatchers. The tape was played for the officers in the field, five or six times, before they could determine what the woman was saying.

Implemented cooperatively by the state, the U.S. Postal Service, Verizon and local communities, E-911 is already in place in some Maine counties as well as in Massachusetts, where Welch said reviews show it is working well.