New Changes to Allegheny County’s 911 Call Centers

Beginning this month, all Allegheny County 911 calls regardless of township, will be directed to one call center. This will make for faster call times and more efficiency for 911 call takers and responders.

The 911 services for the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County are located in the same center; however, calls from the city of Pittsburgh are taken care of by one call-taking pod while the rest of the county’s calls are handled by another pod. The city of Pittsburgh accounts for 40% of all calls. With the new consolidation, the incoming call will now go to the next call-taker regardless of which area the call came in from. The callers will not notice a difference on their end and will not have to take any additional steps when calling.

This summer, Allegheny County also announced that their 911 call center will begin accepting emergency calls via text messaging. Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and now AT&T are among the service providers offering this new feature. The county urges people to call 911 when possible. The text messaging feature should be used for hearing and speech impaired individuals and for those in situations when making a phone call would be dangerous. Those who use this feature should expect a 10-15 second delay when sending and receiving messages.

There are currently 214 full time employees who belong to the Allegheny County 911 staff. They handle 1.3 million calls a year. They work with 130 municipalities, 197 fire departments, 111 police departments and 51 EMS agencies. The merge is expected to aid 911 responders and call takers in saving lives.

Pennsylvania continues to try and implement new laws to protect the rights of injured accident victims. In a previous blog post, we spoke about a new proposed law that Pennsylvania is seeking to get approved. The law would remove any incentive for a drunk driver to leave the scene of a fatal accident. To read more about the proposed law, visit our drunk driving accident.

If you or someone you know have been injured in an accident, it is important to call 911. A police report can be very valuable after an accident. Contact a personal injury attorney to find out what your rights are and what compensation may be available to you.

Source:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “County, Pittsburgh services merge for 911 calls”

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “Allegheny County 911 center accepting emergency calls via text”