HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Sunday marks 14 years since 62 tornadoes tore through Alabama, killing 253 people and injuring thousands of others.
During these devastating storms, a flood of calls into 911 dispatch centers. In Madison County, 911 center CEO Ernie Blair said the Huntsville-Madison County 911 center received 1,700 calls that day. He remembers the time leading up to the storm.
“We were perking up two or three days before because this system was coming in and we were hearing particularly dangerous situation,” Blair said. “We were probably watching Dan Satterfield that morning and there was a lot already happening throughout the state.”
As Blair got to work in the morning, dispatchers were already receiving what is referred to as stray calls.
According to Blair, stray calls are when phone systems get overloaded and not enough people are answering 911 calls. The calls then get forwarded to other centers.
“They have default places where they send those calls,” Blair said. “We didn’t know it at the time, but apparently all day long we were on people’s default list.”
Blair said the calls came in from all over, places like Cullman, Blount, Jefferson and even Tuscaloosa County.
“When you get a 911 call, you can’t just not respond,” Blair said. “You’ve got to hold on to call until you get it to the right area.”
Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. that day, as the storm was hitting the area, Blair said the 911 center got 500 calls. 100 of them are from Tuscaloosa.
According to Blair, the protocol is to connect them with the local agency they are calling. However, because of the chaos happening in Tuscaloosa, the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office was telling dispatchers to hang up and call 911, not knowing they were calling 911.
Blair sprang into action. As an Alabama alum, he had the University Police Department’s number. He called them, and they started taking the calls that were being sent to Madison County from Tuscaloosa.
Blair credits the 911 center’s ability to field these calls to the Hexagon computer-aided dispatch system they have.
“[It] handled all of this complex information coming in and getting it to the right people,” Blair said.
Madison County 911 partners with Hexagon for its computer-aided dispatch.
“Simply put when somebody calls 911, we help assist the call taker and dispatchers to provide a recommendation for the right service delivered at the right time to the right location at the right time,” Ben Ernst said.
Ernst is the Vice President and General Manager at Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure. He said as all technology has evolved since 2011, so has the computer-aided dispatch.
Ernst said things like assistive A.I., which diverts non-emergency and non-priority calls to help lighten the load for dispatchers. He said the ability to text 911 has also helped.
While Ernst believes that the Huntsville-Madison County 911 center has always used the best technology available, he also believes the latest advancements will help them stay ahead.
“Through the technology and through the advancements Hexagon is making and the agency is implementing in their center that the agency is in a better position to serve the citizens and visitors should another storm happen,” Ernst said.
Despite the 1,700 calls the Huntsville-Madison received on April 27, 2011, 1,200 more than average at the time, Blair said none of them went unanswered or mishandled.
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