Who Picks Up the Phone When You Dial 911?

emergency calls are handled by Central County Emergency 911, a dispatching service in Ellisville that answers about 30,000 emergency calls from across west St. Louis and Franklin counties. West County EMS responded to over 4900 of those calls last year, with around 60 percent of the calls originating in the Town and Country or Manchester areas, according to West County EMS Chief David Frazier.

Central County is working on a merger with North Central Fire Alarm, a similar dispatching service that handles calls for 17 fire and EMS departments in North St. Louis County, including fire departments in Kinloch, Spanish Lake, Florissant Valley and Hazelwood.

The merger would affect 23 fire departments in total, though Frazier says residents shouldn’t notice the change.

“We’ll see no impact on residents,” he said, adding that people should continue to dial 911 if they need emergency aid.

Central County Emergency 911’s Chief Michael Turner said the merge is in the second of three phases, and that they are currently working on the strategic planning phase. He said the first phase looked at the feasibility of the merge, and now they are seeing exactly how to fit the two organizations together, from day to day operations to financial matters and governance.

If the merger goes through, Turner said the agency will still be called “Central County Emergency 911,” largely because the name still works and that they will continue to use the state of the art facilities set up in Ellisville. The merger could take place as early as September.

He said currently Central County handles about 30,000 emergency calls and that North Central has about twice that call volume. He expects they would need to add four more dispatchers on each shift, going from the current three to four dispatchers to seven or eight dispatchers.

Turner also noted that they had plenty of room for additional staff and equipment. There are no plans for layoffs and North Central’s dispatchers would simply relocate to Ellisville. North Central employs 14 dispatchers and administrative staff, while Central County has 18 total employees.

According to KMOV, St. Louis County's Emergency Communications Commission supports the merger, which would cut costs for the dispatching centers and improve staffing levels.

How does 911 work?

When a 911 call is placed, it first goes to the nearest police dispatcher. In Town and Country, 911 calls are picked up first by the , which handles calls for Town and Country, Frontenac and Creve Coeur. In Manchester, calls are first answered by the Ballwin Police Department, which covers both Ballwin and .

When these police dispatchers discover the emergency is best handled by a fire or EMS unit, they hit a transfer button, which sends the call to Central County Emergency 911.

Turner said that Central County’s computer system is very sophisticated and eliminates the need for dispatchers to have firsthand knowledge of the area where calls are being made.

“It’s map based. It has streets, land marks, GPS and the location of fire hydrants,” he said. “If they say they’re at a McDonald’s on Bellefontaine Road, it will be in our map.”

He said that Central County was one of the first dispatch units to employ GPS technology so they can accurately track cell phone calls. They also have a mobile communications truck to handle dispatching on the scene at disaster sites or in case of power outages. The truck was sent to Joplin to help with the tornado recovery.

Central County Emergency 911 grew from the Creve Coure Fire Department back in 1969. It grew as more fire departments joined the dispatching service. In 2007 they moved into their current location in Ellisville.