Carroll County, MD Carroll 101, 27 Jul 2021

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From YouTube: Carroll 101 Scott Campbell Department of Public Safety

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Hi, I'm scott campbell director of the carroll county department of public safety.

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And welcome to carol 101 the 2021 edition. First, I'd like to share other very important folks.

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Who help manage our department, specifically ms valerie hawkins, who is our emergency management.

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Manager and mr jack brown, who is our emergency communications manager,.

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Now, let's first start with an overview of what our department does. We have an approved budget in the.

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Current fiscal year of approximately 5.6 million dollars operating and approximately 1 million.

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In capital funds, now there are a number of things that our department does two of the most common.

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Are going to be probably sound familiar to you, and that is emergency communications.

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And emergency management, but we have a third what I call silo or division. That's emergency services.

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Or support services and things that we will elaborate on as we go through this presentation.

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Something that will probably help you understand how we fit into the county structure is to get.

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An idea that, as a standalone department, what our hierarchy looks at so you can see how we compare.

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To other departments, I am the commissioner appointed director of the department and, as.

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You can see from the hierarchy that's available, that you can see how the flow of our different.

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Divisions or areas of responsibility are, and one area you'll see that's not on this slide, but the.

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Next is the area for the emergency communications center, the ecc, because that into itself is a.

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Rather busy hierarchy now in this slide of the ecc hierarchy, you'll see, uh I believe it's in gray. I.

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Apologize looking to the right, I can see it's in gray to where myself and my administrative.

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Assistant are in that, so what's important on this slide is to see what's in yellow, and that is the.

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Emergency communications manager, mr jack brown, I spoke of, and the various shift structure that he.

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Has to staff the county's emergency communications, slash 911 center. So, like any agency, we have our.

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Mission and our mission is- and I apologize- I want to read this correctly- to protect and maintain the.

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Lives and property of the people that live work and visit carroll county, as well as the natural.

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Resources that the county contains, I know that sounds rather broad and it may even sound familiar.

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To others, but the fact is, that is our mission to protect and maintain lives and property.

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So what do we do? You heard me say just briefly that there are two things that are probably.

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Very common, and unfortunately some of you may actually have personal experience with.

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At least the emergency communications side, the 911 side, but emergency 911, emergency communications.

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And emergency management are the two very common uh very well spoken about, and unfortunately, these.

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Times, probably more so than any one of us want to hear about emergency management in those aspects.

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But then the third that I mentioned, that is not quite as well defined, is emergency.

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Services kind of support, it's kind of more of a catch-all and we'll elaborate on that.

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So this more catch-all, what are the things that we do beyond the obvious? The emergency 9-1-1 radio.

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Dispatch and the emergency management: well, we do things like provide plan review by plan review. I.

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Mean we look at site plans in subdivisions from an emergency services perspective.

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We have a gentleman in our honor staff who reviews all building construction drawings, all commercial.

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To ensure compliance with the state fire prevention code again to protect life and property.

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Something else that that we do in our shop. We, we have a uh an automated external defibrillator.

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Aed program that right now we have 48 aeds placed throughout the county either in our senior centers.

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In the branch libraries county office buildings, um you name it if it's a public building, we've tried.

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To protect it or provide protection with it, by placing one or more aeds in the facility, something.

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Else that we do- which I think is a fantastic asset, that the county provides, is that we establish.

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Water supplies in areas in the county that don't have public water, nor do they have a natural.

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Form or natural water supply that is reliable, year-round accessible to support firefighting.

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Operations- and I know it's necessarily a good thing, but it proves they're worth that it seems.

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Like no sooner do we install one of these 30 000 gallon underground water storage, tanks.

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That they're used for firing areas and some of the most remote areas, as I said, they're.

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All over the county, I believe we have 10 of them. That's county installed, there's some that were.

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Done through the development process that we cooperatively have taken into our inventory, but.

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10 that the county has funded that's well over a million dollars worth of an investment in.

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Making sure that the fire service has what it needs to do, what it's, what it's expected to do.

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The last thing I'll mention, as far as what else we do we're, also very blessed to have on our staff.

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A gis analyst and he provides everything from mapping support to the 911 center to assisting.

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The emergency management folks with when they have an event that requires an activation of.

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Their emergency operations center- you can probably imagine the benefit of being able to visually see.

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The location where damage has occurred because of an event where flooding is taking place.

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If there's a hazardous material situation to where there's a potential spill, the gis analyst can help.

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Do some mapping to show what might be affected should the spill worsen or should a spill occur.

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And something else that our gis analyst does- and this is something a new responsibility of.

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Our department, but I think, a very important one- is we are responsible for the county's.

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Addressing efforts that is to make sure that when there is a new property established, new building.

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That it is provided with an appropriate my term spatially, accurate street address, so.

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That, when we're looking for you, we can find you quickly and accurately.

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um Go back to you know the things that we do and I'm going to go back to one of the two.

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Fundamentals- and that is the emergency- the 911 services and emergency management operations.

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um To be candid, those two have legal mandates, but we don't necessarily do things in carroll, county.

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Just because the law mandates that we do them, we do them to the extent that they need to be done.

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So we don't worry about just meeting some minimum benchmark if a job needs to be done.

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We're committed to doing it as well as we can, and that is true of both the 9-1-1 effort as well as.

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Our emergency management effort now, if I may, how about a brief overview about the emergency.

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Communications aspect: now there are two primary functions in the emergency: communications division.

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One is the obvious answering calls made to 9-1-1 any call that originates in carroll county.

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And I say this should be answered by our emergency communications center.

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There's a term for that center. It's called a psap public safety answering point: every jurisdiction.

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In the state of maryland is required by law to have that peace app that 911 center.

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But how well we do it to the extent we do it. The arrangement we have with other jurisdictions.

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Who we serve in addition to the minimum 911 responsibilities? That's what I meant about.

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We go try to go above and beyond, so that the job is done well, the other part of what the.

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Emergency communications center does is, it also does the dispatch of all fire and ems assets in.

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The county, as well as a majority, but not all, of the law enforcement agencies in carroll county.

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So how does 9-1-1 work? Well, it's real simple! When you dial 9-1-1, we have done everything possible.

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To ensure that if you're in carroll county, that call comes to carroll county now, if it's.

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A hard-wired call like the old telephones that we're all used to having at least I am at my age,.

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Or something that could be more reliably routed, we're pretty confident it's going to come here.

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But when you're talking about wireless technology, it can only be a best effort. Example you're in an.

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Area such as mount area, that's on the border of other jurisdictions or any of the other.

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Many communities that carroll has that's near other jurisdictions. You dial 911 using your.

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Cell phone that goes to the nearest tower that provides you that your carrier operates from.

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If we have done our job and it works the way it's designed the panel, the antenna that receives your.

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Call will route your call to us, but that's not a guarantee but don't be concerned, because if that.

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Happens that you go to an adjacent panel and it goes to an adjacent jurisdiction.

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You're going to get immediate assistance, they're prepared for it they'll either transfer the call.

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The conditions allow or if things are so imminent in your emergency, whomever you speak to, is going.

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To take the information and they will share it with us, immediately you're going to get help.

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You will not be lost in the system, so that's what I mean by when I say that, unfortunately,.

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No process is perfect, but the good point is if something does go not as planned. We're prepared.

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So what happens when you call 9-1-1? Well, maybe I should back up when you.

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Call or text 9-1-1, because carroll county is fortunate, that we are text to 9-1-1 capable.

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Regardless, when you reach out to 9-1-1 the first thing a caller is going to hear, is they're going.

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To hear carroll county 9, where you've reached carroll county 9-1-1, what is the location.

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Of your emergency, and why is that? The first question? Because if we don't know where you.

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Are if we can't find you, we can't help you. If the only thing we get is you need help at a location.

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At least we can send somebody to that location to find out what is going on if you start out with.

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A name or the nature of the incident, but you know a medical emergency or there's.

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A vehicle on fire in front of my house or in the parking lot, but no descript address.

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400 and some square mile county odds are we're not going to be able to find him in a timely way.

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You tell us where the emergency is and if that's all, we know at least we can send.

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Emergency service to investigate, if that's the only information we get from you so.

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No question address location, single, most important thing. If we can't find you, we can't help you.

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So, let's now move to emergency management. Well again, I I try to avoid the the cliches etc, but in.

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The emergency management world, it's simply known as planning preparing, responding and recovering.

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From whether it's a natural or a man-made emergency or disastrous event, a catastrophe.

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Another very important term is mitigation, and mitigation can be achieved either by.

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Doing things to eliminate a potential risk or if you can't eliminate that risk of something.

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Possibly happening is trying to lessen the the likely impact if something happens, you're not.

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Going to stop a tornado from falling out of the sky, but you may be able to avoid putting things.

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Of critical importance lives in danger in areas that are prone to flooding, so you might be able.

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To do some things by controlling you, maybe do other things by trying to address the potential.

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Impact for things that we just cannot control or mitigate, so something else you heard me say is.

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Both natural disasters and human caused or man-made, because unfortunately anything's.

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Possible, yes, this is carroll county and we may not have the probability of some things happening.

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Here that other jurisdictions have, but we sure have the the potential airplanes can fall out.

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Of the sky, trains can derail tankers carrying flammable liquids can can flip over and leak.

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Unfortunately, there's probably a number of things that can happen here, but fortunately the.

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Probability of them occurring is very, very slim, so awareness is is very important and our emergency.

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Management folks do a phenomenal job of trying to make sure that folks are aware of things that are.

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About both occurring acutely, you know something has imminently occurred or is about to occur.

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So we have something called carol alert, which is basically our mass notification system, but.

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It also has the ability to be tailored to target audiences there's a prepare me carol, app, which is.

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Available for your the ios, as well as android devices, it's free in the applicable app store.

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And then we also have a presence on social media, both facebook and twitter and, as you can see,.

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On the screen, as far as the way to to follow emergency management on either those platforms.

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So why should what we do matter to you? Well, instead of trying to get too much into specifics,.

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I'll, let you answer that one for yourself: can you imagine not being able to immediately.

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Call and quickly receive assistance in the event of an emergency. I mean not just the frustration.

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Etc, but imagine the likely catastrophic event that if that, if you have something occur, and you can't.

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Get assistance what the outcome would probably be someone's in a life-threatening medical emergency.

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And you can't get help, probably not going to be a good outcome. Someone is witnessing a crime.

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And calls for law enforcement to intervene and we can't get them there quickly.

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Probably not going to be a good outcome, so that's what I shared. Why we do what.

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We do to get you help as reliably as timely as quickly as accurately as we can something else.

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Consider the chaos that would likely come to bear if emergency management didn't do its planning and.

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Preparing for and anticipating things that happen, mitigating the things that they can.

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Imagine the the likely increased, serious or impact of events if they weren't to do those kinds of.

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Things so they look at potential occurrences they prepare for them. They plan for them. They pre-plan.

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How they're going to respond so they occur, and they even have plans in place for how they will.

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Affect trying to return to whatever is considered normal after the fact to recover from so. Instead.

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Of me trying to to give you some specifics, if you will just answer those two questions.

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For yourself, why what we do is important to you, and I think you can answer that pretty quickly.

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So some recent accomplishments well, we were able to expand and enhance both our primary.

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And our alternate emergency communication center or, as you may call it a peace app.

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The place where they answer 911 calls and where they dispatch fire rescue ems law enforcement from.

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Something I also mentioned previously: carroll county recently became text to 9-1-1 operational.

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Actually, we were one of the first in the state to do so, but we participated in the statewide.

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Rollout, which probably gave folks the impression that we weren't operational as early as we were.

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Good point, though, by the state not to do that in a haphazard way. Last thing you want is someone.

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Traveling through this beautiful state and not knowing from jurisdiction, jurisdiction, I can or.

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I can't I can, or I can't text to 9-1-1 and I think it was right for the state to say we're.

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Going to roll this out in a uniform and inclusive way, and that's what we did something else you can.

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You can see on the slide is uh one of our latest 30 000 gallon underground fire protection, water.

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Storage tank installations- this one happens to be in the new windsor uh fire district, as you can see,.

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By their engine company that they're actually doing a an operational test after installation.

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Really important to let you see this because in the upper left, if you look at that large.

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Tank, that's 55 feet in length and 10 foot in diameter that holds 30, 000 gallons of water.

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Well, there's a number of reasons why that amount of water is uh was what we chose. First of all, it's.

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The largest single vessel that can be shipped over land without a special permit, but it also.

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Happens to coincide with the insurance industry and the fire services when it comes to equality.

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Of water and flow rates that are considered appropriate to fight structure, fires, etc.

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And it gives us the opportunity to put these in places that maybe a larger field, a tank field or.

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Something would not be feasible, so 30 000 gallon, if you allow me to say, is kind of that sweet spot.

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To allow us to do that, and then the the last thing I'll share is that it wasn't too long ago that we.

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Were very fortunate, you know that we transitioned to a new cad or computer-aided dispatch system.

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This included a substantial upgrade to what the people in the field the field providers see.

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As far as information in the form of an mdt, a mobile data terminal and now probably better.

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Labeled, an mdc mobile data, computer, every police, car every fire engine medic unit.

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Ladder truck in this county has got basically a vehicle mounted laptop computer or tablet in it.

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So not only can the dispatchers be interact with these assets through the radio, but they have this.

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Computer interaction capability: we can share uh response route information, supplement information.

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On the instance going to and etc, and all this came to be because the commissioners agreed.

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To fund a transition to a new cad platform that supported these mobile data terminals,.

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So some examples of public safety in action. I'm sure most of you remember winter storm jonas.

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January of 2016., now carroll county doesn't get frequent large snowstorms. But, let's just say we.

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Get more than our fair share! Well winter storm! Jonas, as you can see by the pictures, dumped.

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A lot of snow in the county, some getting some areas in the county getting more than 32 inches.

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Just to give you an example of how emergency managers responded.

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They opened the eoc on friday, the 22nd and it remained open and functional until sunday. The 24th.

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The governor declared a state of emergency 7 a.m, friday, the 22nd of january, and that was primarily.

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To facilitate and free up assets for preparations, and then our commissioners in a proactive way.

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Declared a local state of emergency 8 am the next morning as conditions start to bear out.

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Here's another example: the tornado that struck in november of 2018 in the mount airy area, the.

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Bottom left you'll see a screenshot of the radar and the upper arrow shows you the approximate path.

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Of the the area of the storm as it moved through the front in this case.

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That spawned the tornado so look in the red box with the white text.

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That was what we were to anticipate, I don't think anywhere, you'll see likelihood of tornadoes or the.

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Possibility of tornadoes in that showers and perhaps a thunderstorm and the locations etc.

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But because anything can happen at any time as it turns out a an ef-1 and pods and looking for.

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The confirmed the national weather service, an ef-1 tornado struck. Fortunately it didn't take lives or.

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Caused casualties now, as you can see from this picture, there was structural damage, but we were.

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Very fortunate in the current area, that was more highly populated, but that shows you. You know how.

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Emergency management responded to something that they really weren't, given a heightened awareness.

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For but because they were prepared that when it did happen, they had a plan in place to respond to.

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React to it so I'm going to go back to and finish with emergency communications. Our 911 center.

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And here's why one of the things that we want to talk about is challenges future challenges.

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Well, like any agency we're facing many, but there's one that into itself is probably as challenging.

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Or daunting as everything else we're facing uh in our shop, and that is the pending transition.

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To next generation, or next gen or even ng911, it's a paradigm change the old way of picking up the.

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Phone and contacting 911 by dialing or punching in a number over a hard copper line. Those days are.

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Soon, to be gone and everything's going to be ip based, everything is going to be web-based the.

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Way calls are routed, are going to change, etc. Now it's all for the good, but it's a paradigm change.

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And it's not just the technology, that's going to change. People are going to be able to send.

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Photographs wave files email to contact the 911 center, so the impact is we're still evaluating.

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It and there's still a lot of questions that we don't have answers for, but we're working hard.

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To get them, what are we going to do with this information? Is there going to be a concern for.

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Maintaining the records for chain of custody or is it evidence.

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Who's going to eval or use the information, are we going to pass it on to law enforcement.

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To the fire rescue ems people, are we going to retain it for a future for a future consultation.

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Could it impact likely will the qualifications of the folks who work the 911 center? Is this.

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Going to require a new skill set, what's going to be the impact on the folks when.

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They see information that they aren't currently exposed to when they see.

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Photographs and videos of things going on that right now by the grace of god, they're.

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Insulated from having to endure on a day and day out basis, so that's why we say the next gen 9-1-1.

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And everything that comes with it, the technology, the training, the staffing, the concern for.

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Liability records retention it just the list goes on and on without any question is the most.

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Daunting future challenge that we are working very hard to address as we speak so with that.

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I hope I've covered most of what the carroll county department of public safety.

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Is is about what we do, but here's what's most important if you have any questions whatsoever.

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Please don't hesitate, you'll, see the content invasion myself and the two folks that I mentioned.

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Previously miss valerie hawkins and mr jack brown, you are welcome to reach out to any of us myself.

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Miss hawkins mr brown, about anything: if it's not in their bailiwick, I'm sure they will refer. You.

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To the right person I will simply share, I would I would recommend that if you have a question.

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About emergency management give ms hawkins a call, send her an email, and similarly, if it's.

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About communications 911 reach out to mr brown and I'm very confident that you'll find both of them.

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Very helpful, so I hope this was as informative as it was intended to be. I appreciate your interest.

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And again, if you have any future questions, we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.