The Hinds County Department of Emergency Management operated from its new location during the storm that hit Jackson on June 16 and caused widespread power outages and brought down trees.
The department’s move from the basement of the Eudora Welty Library in downtown Jackson, which has no air conditioning, to the former Gulf Guaranty building at 4785 I-55 North proved to be a good thing, said Joey Perkins, director of Hinds County EOC.
“We were able to see things work as they were designed to work,” he said.
Improvements such as a new generator and upgrades to technology were part of the move, he said.
The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office dispatch did not lose power during the storm and had no problems, unlike the Jackson Police Department’s 911 dispatch.
“We have a brand-new generator,” Perkins said. “We didn’t have an issue.”
Jackson Police Department Interim Chief Joe Wade said during a city of Jackson news conference on June 20 that “what could go wrong, did go wrong” with JPD’s 911 dispatch during the storm.
Both Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Wade said during that news conference that the city’s 911 emergency response dispatch went down during the storm and so did that of the Hinds County Department of Emergency Management.
Wade said this during the city of Jackson’s news conference on June 20:
“As the mayor states, Yes, our 911 system dd go down. Yes, the Hinds County EOC system did go down. But Mother Nature is undefeated.
“When it transpired, we had an emergency plan in place. We executed it. But we had issues with our generators, our backup generators, as the mayor stated. What could go wrong unfortunately did go wrong. Our generators are not designed to go forever. As they went down, it created a whole other issue for us.
“Thanks to the mayor and his team, we were able to utilize 311 and the Mayor’s Action Line. We were also able to give you direct numbers to the precinct captains.”
Perkins said the problem with JPD’s dispatch was caused when the power went out and the generator failed to work at the backup site on McRaven Road in south Jackson. Entergy prioritized the center as an essential service and restored the power there, he said.
The nine Hinds County EOC employees moved into the new location about six weeks ago. Gulf Guaranty Insurance donated the building that was built in 1969 to the county after it moved to 7 River Bend Place in Flowood in the fall of 2020 and Hinds County spent about $1.7 million to renovate it.
“Our building wasn’t 100 percent completely finished but I made a decision to move,” he said.
Twelve to 15 employees, who work various shifts for the Hinds County Sheriff’s dispatch, which formerly located in the basement of the Welty Library, also work at the former Gulf Guaranty building, Perkins said.
The dispatch system works like this: Calls not answered by JPD automatically roll over to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office, then to the Byram Police Department and the Clinton Police Department.
Lack of personnel to answer calls or simultaneous emergencies that occur are among reasons why calls roll over. “You need to have bodies in a chair answering the calls,” said District 1 Hinds County Supervisor Robert Graham, who worked in dispatch communications for 25 years and trains dispatchers across the country.
A call answered by a dispatcher connects to a computer-aided dispatch system with automated call distribution, meaning a call is assigned to the next available communications employee who can answer it.
“There are four things the person who answers the call can tell,” Graham said. “They can tell the time the person called in, the time the dispatcher answered the call, the time the call was transferred if was transferred to an ambulance source and the time the call was dispatched.
“Once a call has been dispatched, you can tell the time the emergency vehicle first arrived on the scene. Finally, you can tell what time the call was actually cleared.”
The National Emergency Number Association standard is to answer 911 calls by the second ring and administrative calls by the third ring, Graham said.
“The goal is to have all calls answered by the fourth ring,” he said. “No matter what it should be answered by the fourth ring.”
Twenty-five seconds will have passed if a call is answered on the fifth ring. “If it rings 10 times it’s still less than a minute,” he said.
Many callers grow anxious if dispatch takes more time to answer a call during an emergency, Graham said, and that’s understandable. “Every second means something,” he said.
Hinds County, the city of Jackson, the city of Byram and the city of Clinton fund their own dispatch equipment and employees. “There’s no one size fits all when it comes to equipment,” he said.
Hinds County leases its system from AT&T and usually gets a new system every five years, Perkins said.
