Albany County opens new E911 Center – troyrecord

Albany County Sheriff Craig D. Apple speaks during a previous news conference. (AP FILE PHOTO)

ALBANY COUNTY, N.Y. — Albany County Sheriff Craig D. Apple, Sr. announced the grand opening of the new Albany County E911 Center/Emergency Operations Center in Clarksville.

The new 11,000-square-foot facility boasts an E911 call center that can accommodate 37 emergency 911 dispatchers and call takers. The dispatchers will be seated at state-of-the-art Xybix consoles that are outfitted with all-new Motorola MCC7500E radio consoles, NextGen Intrado, Inc. phone systems, and Central Square Technologies Computer Aided Dispatch systems. The facility is equipped with several layers of redundancy on all major systems to ensure uninterrupted service. This includes two generators, two HVAC systems, two uninterrupted power supply systems, and multiple fiber optic lines from several carriers coming in from different locations. The new Intrado phone system will be the first in the Capital Region to offer text-to-911 capabilities, texting language translation, and the ability to accept live video from 911 callers.

Apple said the call center will process more than 150,000 calls for service yearly and dispatch five law enforcement agencies, 15 fire departments, and six EMS agencies throughout the county. It will house the phone system that all Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) in the county utilize to process more than half a million calls for service annually. In addition to this, it will serve as the backup call center for other agencies within Albany and Rensselaer counties with sufficient space for outside agency dispatchers and call takers if necessary. The location change from the old communications center to the new facility will not affect any services or methods that the public currently uses to call 911 or the various agencies they dispatch. All published 10-digit phone/fax numbers will remain the same.

Aside from the E911 emergency dispatch center, the facility also houses Albany County’s new  Emergency Operations Center (EOC) from which representatives, from both public and private entities, can gather to better mitigate manmade and natural disasters. While collocated in one building to ensure proper communication and enable unified command in the event of an emergency, the EOC  can be isolated from the dispatch center by design to avoid any interruption as the two work side by side during emergency situations. As with the new call center, the EOC includes the most current state-of-the-art technologies available to ensure the highest level of service and efficiency for the residents of Albany County and the surrounding jurisdictions.