As the GNWT prepares to introduce 911 across the territory next year, MLAs want to know how people in communities missing street names and house numbers will communicate their locations to the central dispatcher in Yellowknife.
Hay River North MLA R.J. Simpson, left, said 911 operators in Yellowknife will need to be aware of the local place names in communities when the service goes live in the summer of 2019.
March 15, 2018
In some communities, residents refer to addresses like, “John's house beside the green house, which is beside the purple house,” Shane Thompson, MLA for Nahendeh, said during a committee meeting last Thursday.
He asked if the department of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) would fund the mapping of each of the territory's 33 communities as part of the 911 roll-out.
MACA Minister Caroline Cochrane said numberi
ng houses and mapping is important, but communities will have to use their own money to do it.
“Even if we weren't doing 911, this is something that communities need to be doing,” said Cochrane.
“It's no longer OK to say 'the blue house behind John's house'... Community mapping should be a priority.”
R.J. Simpson, MLA for Hay River North, raised concerns about communicating the locations of places with local nicknames.
Everyone in Hay River knows Disneyland, Brown Town, 553 and the Caboose, said Simpson, but a 911 operator in Yellowknife may not.
Cochrane said MACA will work with 911 telecommunicators to make sure they know the common names and official names of streets in the different communities.
Right now, people in NWT must dial a seven-digit number for an emergency response.
MACA wants to have 911 in place, territory-wide, by the summer of 2019.
Kevin Brezinski, the director of public safety at MACA, said the seven-digit numbers will be phased immediately after 911 goes live.
He said the department is developing a “very comprehensive communications strategy” to get residents used to the new emergency number.
The plan is to centralize 911 telecommunication services in Yellowknife, in the same building as Med-Response, the team that dispatches medevac flights.
MACA officials said other NWT communities do not have the communications infrastructure necessary to operate their own 911 services.
The RCMP cannot oversee 911 in NWT either, they said, because the force is at capacity.
Eleanor Young, the deputy minister of MACA, said the territory's 911 program will offer callers in small communities that don't have medical first responders, “very basic” over-the-phone health care instruction while they wait for help to arrive.
Brezinski said the government is still working out how it to incorporate translation services and services for people with hearing and communication impairments into the 911 system.
A number of MLAs, noted that stretches of the highway have no cell phone service and some communities have limited coverage.
Cochrane said the GNWT is not looking at expanding cell service right now.