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10 <br />Orange County Chief's Associatior_ 12012 <br />Lastly, building penetration is minimal in large structures, including commercial buildings, <br />schools, and university facilities. The fire and rescue services often respond to these areas, <br />operating without radio communication. The aforementioned mobile repeaters partially <br />improve building penetration; however, the OCCA encourages Orange County to adopt <br />legislation mandating repeaters to be placed inside large structures, as some other local North <br />Carolina jurisdictions have required. Local examples include the municipalities of Cary, Chapel <br />Hill, Durham, and Raleigh. <br />Objective B: To advocate for the continued and ongoing support of the radio paging system with <br />consistent use of audible call information beginning in 2012. <br />Background: The VHF /UHF repeater system forms the backbone of the radio paging system used <br />by all departments throughout Orange County. Individual departments issue pagers to <br />emergency responders because it would be impractical to purchase take -home radios and <br />require continuous monitoring. Emergency responders have repeatedly been paged and not <br />received follow -up audible call information. This small step is vital to correctly routing personnel <br />when seconds count. The OCCA encourages Orange County Emergency Services to immediately <br />apply appropriate policy and training steps to correct this common oversight. <br />Cell phones and digital text pagers have repeatedly proven inadequate as sole communication <br />devices for emergency call outs due to coverage and network issues; however, they are still <br />important secondary communication devices used by emergency responders. <br />Objective C: To encourage the continued development of a robust mobile data network throughout <br />Orange County by January 2014. <br />Background: Cell phone data networks form the third leg of the emergency communications <br />network, and will be a vital component to the future mobile data network (Goal II, Objective B). <br />The expansion of the existing capacity of this network benefits not only emergency responders, <br />but also citizens with increasing digital connectivity demands. <br />GOAL II: Improving the 9 -1 -1 Telecommunications System and Center <br />Objective A: To work with Orange County to ensure the deployment of a state -of- the -art 911 <br />Telecommunications Center that is able to dispatch emergency calls within 90 seconds or less 90% of <br />the time by January 2014. <br />Background: "The Telecommunications Center is the public safety answering point and is the <br />link for citizens to access law enforcement and emergency service agencies. "11 The OCCA seeks <br />to ensure consistent and reliable dispatching by supporting and encouraging the Orange County <br />911 Telecommunications Center to fully adopt additional nationally recognized standards 12 and <br />measureable benchmarks for public safety call taking and dispatching. Orange County itself has <br />long- acknowledged "the goal is to process and push the call to the first response agencies within <br />" http: / /www.co. orange .nc.us /emergency /About.asp <br />12 NFPA 1221: Standard for the Installation, Maintenance, and Use of Emergency Services Communications Systems, 2010 Edition, & APCO <br />Recommended Best Practices PSAPs /Telematics Call Processing, 2009 <br />