Iqaluit council approves upgrades to emergency dispatch

The City of Iqaluit’s Department of Emergency Services, housed in the Arnaitok complex, got a green light to modernize its emergency dispatch system, which deals with health emergencies and fire alarms. (PHOTO BY PETER VARGA)

Iqaluit City Council voted to give the go-ahead for major upgrades to the city’s emergency dispatch centre July 23, when it approved six new systems and pieces of equipment requested by the emergency services department.

The overdue upgrades will modernize Iqaluit’s emergency response systems, replacing expired and soon-to-become obsolete equipment, and keep them compatible with the RCMP detachment systems, Luc Grandmaison, the city’s director of emergency and protective services, told city councillors.

The upgrades will improve response times to health emergencies and fire alarms, Grandmaison said when he described the six upgrades at the regular city council meeting.

He added that there would be “a few more” upgrades in addition to the six he presented.

“This is very much needed,” Coun. Mary Wilman told Grandmaison at the meeting. “We did a tour of your department a while back, before your time, and it was very much running on old systems.”

Council had budgeted $190,000 to improve the city’s emergency dispatch centre. Grandmaison, who also serves as fire chief, said the cost of upgrades and improvements will come to about $50,000 under tht budget.

He described six of the new systems to council:

• An alarm monitoring system at $8,095, to replace a discontinued model in use for eight years, now in disrepair.

• Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software, compatible with RCMP systems, at about $24,800. The system prompts dispatchers with questions “to make sure that we ask the proper questions to transfer to the responding firefighters or ambulance attendants,” Grandmaison said.

• Centrex telephone system at $6,562. The system will reduce the number of ringtones on the callers’ end, on a line that is continuously active. The RCMP’s “V” Division in Iqaluit uses the same system.

• A voice recorder system, at $34,700, which records “all telephone and radio lines in and out of dispatch.”

• Dispatch workstations to replace old ones, at about $22,500 with shipping.

• Fire and ambulance station alerting system at $17,000. This will reduce response times, from the time a call is received to the dispatch of emergency crews, to as little as one and a half minutes — the North American standard, Grandmaison said.

Asked about emergency dispatch workers’ ability to understand Inuktitut, Grandmaison said that four “casual dispatchers” are bilingual in the Inuit language and English.

“There are also in-staff employees or firefighters who can also help dispatch” in cases where an Inuktitut speaker is needed, he said.

Improvements to equipment will put more of an onus on dispatchers to provide better service, Grandmaison said.

“The responsibility will be on the dispatcher to enhance the service, and be quicker,” he said. “This will revamp the service we provide,” bringing it to a higher professional standard as response times drop.

Grandmaison credited the work of a committee, headed up by dispatcher Steven Allen, for planning the upgrades to dispatch systems and components.

The committee began its work in February 2013, and will continue to “manage and analyze” the new systems once they are up and running, he said.