community
february1
2018
Inside Columbia 9-1-1 Communications District
this way. “This allows us a little more
freedom to do what we need to do, get
business done, and not have to rely on
someone else’s budget,” explains Hils-
inger.
Columbia 9-1-1 is managed by a
five member Board of Directors who are
elected by the public from five regional
zones that cover the five main commu-
nities in Columbia County; Board mem-
bers serve four year terms. The current
Board includes: Dee Wooley from Clats-
kanie, Sean Clark from Rainier, Henry
Heimuller from St. Helens, Dave Craw-
ford from Vernonia/Mist, and Rob An-
derson from Scappoose. Crawford is the
former Fire Chief of the Mist-Birkenfeld
Fire District. A Budget Committee,
made up of an appointed representative
from each zone, works with staff to plan
and manage the District’s finances. Ran-
dy Hanson is the current Budget Com-
mittee member for Vernonia/Mist. To
further help ensure maximum efficiency
in operations an Advisory Board, made
up of the Chiefs of every public safety,
emergency agency, and other user agen-
cies in the County, meets four times a
year.
Daily operations are run by the
staff, including an Executive Director,
Operations Manager, and Communica-
tions Manager. Currently the Executive
Director position is being filled by In-
terim Executive Director Brian Burright.
Burright, a former Division Chief with
Columbia River Fire and Rescue, has
filled the position since May 2017. Co-
lumbia 9-1-1 is currently searching for a
new permanent Executive Director.
Hilsinger is the overall Opera-
tions Manager. Diana Karthauser is the
Communications Manager and oversees
the dispatch center and the Communica-
tion Specialists staff that work there.
According to Hilsinger the bulk
of Columbia 9-1-1’s budget goes to-
wards personnel services and equipment.
Because of the seriousness of the job and
the high level of stress their Communi-
cation Specialist positions experience, a
lot of time and attention goes into per-
sonnel services for hiring staff, main-
taining them, and training them. Hils-
inger says Columbia 9-1-1 currently has
12 dispatchers on staff and are always
looking to identify potential candidates
interested in a career in public safety.
Dispatchers sit or stand at a
multi-screen, adjustable computer con-
sole where they can monitor the avail-
ability of area hospitals, track locations
of officers and other responders, and
take and place radio and telephone calls.
Light bars at each console station let
anyone in the room know who is cur-
rently on the telephone or radio with a
call.
Maintaining equipment also re-
quires time and funding. “Technology is
and cell phone bills, along with a local
tax levy approved by local voters. The
local tax levy is up for renewal this year
and will be on the election ballot in No-
vember.
Columbia 9-1-1 has recently
been implementing Text to 9-1-1 through
a pilot project in the Portland Metro area
the backbone of everything we do,” says
Hilsinger. “We have phone systems, ra-
dio systems, computer systems, and a
building we have to maintain.”
Other staff include a GIS Spe-
cialist for mapping and a CAD Special-
ist for the computer information system,
along with several administrative sup-
port personnel positions.
Columbia 9-1-1 is funded
through tax dollars collected by the State
of Oregon as a surcharge on telephone
in 2016. Text to 9-1-1 will allow some-
one that is unable speak to a dispatcher
to request assistance. This service is not
yet available to the entire County. “We
tell people ‘Call when you can, text
when you can’t,’ because a telephone
call is much more efficient in communi-
cating information,” says Hilsinger. She
says she expects use of Text to 9-1-1 to
increase in the future as more cell towers
are installed and technological advances
continue in the region.
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7
continued from front page
In addition to police, fire and
medical emergency calls, Columbia 9-1-
1 also answers alarm calls and partners
with security agencies, answers non-
emergency calls and after hours calls for
local public safety agencies, including
the county probation office, and local
public works departments. They also as-
sist agencies with things like contacting
towing services and mental health trans-
ports or crisis intervention teams when
needed.
Columbia 9-1-1 dispatchers
are trained to provide lifesaving medi-
cal instruction. “That is one of our key
services we provide for the citizens of
our County,” says Hilsinger. “We can
give instructions for how to perform the
Heimlich Maneuver, or CPR, or even
how to initially treat a burn, while re-
sponders are on their way to assist with a
patient.”
Dispatchers also provide data
entry services for agencies for traffic
stops, warrants, missing persons, stolen
items, “... anything that would go into
a state or national system – we have the
ability to input that for our agencies,”
says Hilsinger.
Although statistics for 2016-17
were not yet available, in 2015-16 Co-
lumbia 9-1-1 took 55,939 non-emergen-
cy calls, 8,133 land-line 9-1-1 calls, and
17,152 cell phone 9-1-1 calls. In 2017
Columbia 9-1-1 received 64 Text to 9-1-
1 “sessions” generating 221 incoming
messages and 176 outgoing messages.
All those calls led to a total of 76,054
dispatches to multiple agencies. All traf-
fic stops in the County totaled 9,351.
The Columbia 9-1-1 building
contains several large conference and
meeting rooms, designed to be convert-
ed to Emergency Command Centers in
the case of a large or regional disaster.
Hilsinger says there are some
big projects on the horizon for Colum-
bia 9-1-1, including the installation of
a new radio tower which will improve
service in the south part of the County,
along with some frequency adjustments
to the radio system which will mitigate
some ongoing interference issues. Hils-
inger said they are currently completing
a project to upgrade their CAD informa-
tion system in partnership with Wash-
ington and Clackamas counties and the
Lake Oswego Police Department, which
will put all those agencies on the same
system and allow joint communication
among the agencies. In addition, up-
grades to the radio consoles in the dis-
patch center are an upcoming priority.
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