New Placer County Emergency Dispatch System Will Accept Texts, Live Streams
ROCKLIN (CBS13) - If you are outside Rocklin police department and text 911, you'll get a response telling you to place a voice call.
Texting and video streaming emergencies are coming statewide and Placer County is getting a head start on the technology.
Rocklin police dispatch says the 911 system created in 1968 is not capable of accepting digital technology. To keep up with smartphones, the 911 call centers need to be overhauled.
Rocklin, Roseville, Auburn, Lincoln, and the Placer County Sheriff's Office will be moving 911 into the new age of mobile technology.
To start, this spring, the five departments will all be on the same 911 call network, helping neighboring departments out with high-volume calls.
"If for some reason, Rocklin were inundated with 911 calls and we had a major incident, there would be a preemptive, identified threshold that after this many rings, or this many seconds of the phone ringing and not being picked up, we would automatically roll that to an agency that wasn't busy," said Rocklin Police Department administrator Sandi Bumpus.
The plan to combine the cities' 911 calls into one network came after the 2011 Lincoln propane tanker fire. That incident forced Lincoln's only 911 dispatcher to evacuate the call center and Rocklin picked up Lincoln's emergency calls.
Dispatchers will start training on the new system in May. Placer County hopes to have it go live in July. You won't be able to text or live stream 911 right away. It could be several more months before that becomes an option for citizens.