By Cheryl Jahn

FOCC at Fire Hall #1 up and running

Oct 20, 2022 | 3:50 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – With plenty of pomp and ceremony, local dignitaries were on hand to tour the new Fire Operations Communications Centre in Fire Hall #1, a venture that has been in the making for years.

“We’re going to be able to, with the new Next Gen 911 system, we will be effortlessly able to transition to new way of calling 911,” explains Owen Torgerson, Mayor of Valemount. “And it could include video calls, Face time or other sorts of social media calling to this very centre.”

The FOCC is a much more advanced set-up, designed to meet a growing demand and new regulations put in place by the federal government. Regulations that haven’t been upgraded since, as Mayor Owen Torgerson says, there were only rotary telephones.

“Here in our Fire Hall #1, houses our primary Fire Operations Communications Centre and the Public Safety Operations Centre houses our backup centre. Both are fully redundant,’ explains Marty Dupas, Chief Communications Officer. There is additional space means this site in Fire Hall #1 will also serve as the Emergency Response Centre when things like fires and floods happen.

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Fire dispatch currently services the Regional Districts of Fraser-Fort George, Cariboo, Bulkley Nechako and Bulkley-Stikene as well as backup services for North Island. And soon add Central Kootenay to that list. That’s 80 communities within the top two-thirds of the province.

“That figure represents a building of relationships since 1991,” says Torgerson. “What started as a few communities within the Regional District of Fraser Fort George itself and the City of Prince George, has grown to a quarter of a million people in British Columbia able to receive fire dispatch services from this single building.”

he Next Gen technology will mean nothing for the users of 911, but at the receiving end, it will move from analog to IP technology.

by Cheryl Jahn

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