Steve Lipscomb, Summers County 911 Director, said the Enhanced 911 Committee is hammering out the technical details for two grants to improve communications within and throughout the community emergency response agencies. The grant applications themselves, Lipscomb said, are to be submitted by the Summers County Commission; one grant for law enforcement, and the other for health, fire and other agencies in the community. Both grants provide federal funding through the state of West Virginia.
The grants would provide funding for the acquisition of digital radios for nearly a dozen agencies in Summers County.
Lipscomb said the agencies include seven fire departments, two law enforcement departments, city maintenance and first-responding agencies.
“We are dealing with the technical specifics for the digitally programmed radios and options for them,” Lipscomb said. “We need 50 to 60 radios and we are working on making the options as uniform as possible.”
The radios are to allow agencies within Summers County to operate within the digital Statewide Inter-Operational Radio Network (SIRN), as well as to alleviate dead spots in the transmission of radio signals.
Wednesday’s meeting, Lipscomb said, was anticipated to be “the last big meeting the agencies needed to hammer out all the technical details” before handing the application process over to the commissioners.
“The grants set no limit on the amount we ask for, so we are looking at the need and ask for all of it,” Lipscomb said. “The next grant cycle, we can ask for things we still need. We have a good history for that.”
The importance of moving the process forward was expressed at the first meeting of the Enhanced 911 Committee meeting in February. Some of the agencies represented on the committee expressed concern, frustration and urgency for a more dependable communications network within and between agencies.
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