MONTROSE - With the boom of new houses and streets continuing at an unabated clip, the city of Montrose recently hired a 911 coordinator to help make sure law enforcement and emergency personnel are responding to the correct addresses when a call comes into dispatch.
Matt Goetsch, whose official title is E911 coordinator, is employed by the city, but the Montrose Emergency Telephone Service Authority reimburses the city for his part-time salary. METSA serves all of Montrose County and part of Ouray County. It collects taxes from telephone companies in order to run and oversee the 911-call system.
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Mecham said precious response minutes can be lost when the incorrect address appears on a dispatcher's screen when a 911 call comes in. In the past, the city of Montrose's Information Technology Department handled the duty of updating the database, but Goetsch was brought in take over the task.
"It's not real frequent, but in an emergency situation it could mean life or death if you're calling for the fire or police departments, or an ambulance," Mecham said. "If it's (the address) wrong we could be headed in the wrong direction. As the community grows more and more of these types of errors are generated."
Mecham said sometimes it's necessary to have someone go to the address in the database to verify if it's correct or not. The database that Goetsch is updating is called the master street address guide (MSAG) and he'll use the city's geographic information systems (GIS) and a regional GIS system to update the database. Goetsch said the MSAG is the baseline for the data that comes up on a dispatcher's screen during a call.
"I'm getting into some of the corrections, as well as educating myself on 911 procedures and techniques," Goetsch said. "This is my first foray into the 911 world. I previously worked for the Santa Fe County Assessors Office's mapping unit. When I worked in the assessors office I used GIS to map property mines and in this position I'll use GIS as a more efficient means of maintaining the MSAG database."
Contact Mike Robuck via e-mail at miker@montrosepress.com.
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