What ONE Advocate Can Do (and Did Do)
September 13, 2010
Good morning Bill and Czarina,
As requested, here is a summary of activities in regards to Emergency Notification by Reverse 911 calls to the community.
In July, Governor Patrick declared a state emergency on the mosquitoes in southeast Massachusetts when numerous tests resulted positive in EEE or infected mosquitoes. The state contracted contractors with airplanes for aerial spraying. Announcements were made in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Not in sign language and it is the second most used language after English in this country. As a result, many residents slept with windows open when the aerial spraying occurred during the night between 8 pm and 3 am.
As this was reported to the Board of Selectmen in third week of July, we were informed that the Plymouth County Sheriff Dept handled the Reverse 911 calls to notify the residents. The newspaper reported this and is available on the local wicked news online.
Plymouth County Sheriff Dept contacted me and a meeting was set up for Tuesday, Sept 7.
Result of the Meeting:
Dd Discussion of the Reverse 911 System and capabilities
Tour of the 911 system
General discussions on citizens with disabilities and methods of communications,
tdd’s, e-mails, videophones, vrs (video relay services)
Detailed review of residents phone numbers (mine, several others)
Sheriff Dept requested for me to be on their advisory committee to come up with resolutions
Modified the form so that people can fill out forms to include text messages or e-mails
Presented to the Sheriff Dept a report containing the estimated population of citizens with disabilities by towns.
Information presented were information about DPC and Mass Office on Disabilities.
How to get interpreters on the local level and immediately for the local areas.
Sub-committee of the emergency preparedness team to include people with disabilities to cover areas of concern not known by people without disabilities.
Actions to date:
Contacted Sorenson Communications of Salt Lake City who manufactures 85 % of the videophones for the hearing impaired in United States.
I have joined NEMA (911 advisory panel ) and am in process of finding more info.
Sent Task Force report on Emergency Preparedness sent out by Bill Allan to Sheriff Dept.
Will meet again in a few weeks
Sheriff Dept will test using my communications system and try to send messages through videophone, tdd and blackberry. Test will be conducted very soon like this week.
State Representative Tom Calter was notified of progress and he requested to be included.
Findings:
Researched and found out that there are about 10 different manufacturers of the 911 systems and software and none of the companies ever considered communications with the hearing impaired community. Completely left out.
In Kingston, 25% of the residents do not have land phones and rely completely on the cell phones. Cell phone companies do not provide phone numbers to police.
Those residents relying on cell phones have to register their phone numbers with the sheriff dept and can be done on line.
Plymouth County Sheriff Dept is the only Sheriff Dept that is responsible for two counties totaling to 1.1 million residents. They are also responsible for Bristol County.
Conclusion:
The effort will require testing of the system to understand what can or cannot work and will require cooperation from the manufacturer of the 911 call system to work out the kinks.
The notification system affects not only the hearing impaired, but the hearing residents that do not have land lines. Potentially 25% of the communities do not have land phones.
A white paper will be developed by the committee to present lessons learned for the other communities and other sheriff departments.
This may be the model for the rest of the country.
Hope this info helps. You can ask any questions.
Thank you for your interest.
Regards,
Alan Gifford
Chairman of the Commission On Disabilities for Town of Kingston