Barry Porterfield
Pauls Valley Daily Democrat
Pauls Valley, Oklahoma —
The switch was turned on and tests calls made as Wednesday became day number one for Garvin County’s brand new enhanced 911 emergency telephone system.
In a kind of twist of fate the long-anticipated system covering all of the county outside of Pauls Valley went online on a date — 9-1-’10 — perfectly suited for the big day.
System coordinator Diann Williams said that part of it was strictly a coincidence. Still, it was a time of quiet excitement as Williams and several others looked on as the new 911 call center in Pauls Valley became operational and ready to field emergency phone calls.
“It’s been 2 1/2 years —this is the moment,” Williams said with a smile.
“I’m excited and ready to get it off and running; to get it started,” she said.
“It’s kind of like letting your child go to school. You work all those years and get to the point where you need to let it go.”
The effort to bring a true countywide 911 system to Garvin County started years ago before receiving the approval of voters back in February 2007.
Since that time Williams was hired to serve as the 911 coordinator and the entire second floor of a county owned building in Pauls Valley remodeled to become the site of the new system’s call center.
Also a big part of that process have been the members of a 911 committee volunteering their time to work as advisors to the county’s commissioners. The committee is chaired by David Johnson, yet another of those anxious for the system to get going.
“It’s a matter of entering a code and the switch goes on,” Johnson said about the system’s start.
Right in the middle of the call center’s start Wednesday was Rob Stoltz of Stoltz Telecom, which is the company that installed all the equipment for the new system.
“All the phone providers get together in a conference call and we start cutting the 911 circuits to where the 911 calls start coming here,” Stoltz said.
Once the process was tested and completed it meant all 911 calls outside of Pauls Valley will go to this new call center rather than local police departments around the county or the sheriff’s office.
“Anything inside the city limits of Pauls Valley will still go to Pauls Valley,” he said about the local 911 system in place for nearly two decades.
Stoltz employee Jason Hayes believes the new system is giving the county something pretty good.
“It gives better 911 coverage to the county. It gives 911 to areas that have never had it before,” Hayes said.
