Accessing emergency response personnel has become a lot simpler for most residents of the Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine (RDKS) with the advent of 9-1-1 emergency telephone service. The easy-to-remember service was officially launched today.

“It’s been a substantial undertaking,” explains Board Chair, Harry Nyce. “The Regional District of Kitimat-Stikine 9-1-1 Emergency Telephone Response System was built with funding through contributions from the Canada/British Columbia Infrastructure Program.”

“I would like to take the opportunity to thank you and your staff for the work done on the Regional District of Kitimat Stikine 911 project. Building the address data and manipulating other data sources to meet the specifications for 911 dispatch has been a challenging task. I would like to acknowledge John Galambos’ ideas, abilities and dedication to a very demanding project. Thanks John, the delivery of 911 service in the Regional District of Kitimat Stikine has been very well received and you and Pacific Alliance Technologies were an important part of it,” stated Eva Kerby, Mapping and GIS Technician for the Regional District.

Pacific Alliance Technologies (PAT) provided stakeholders with an innovative web-based tool to move the physical location of street addresses.  iVAULT Address was delivered through a Software as a Service (SaaS) model so that RDKS could quickly provide the business system necessary without need of additional servers or IT support.  PAT took the adjusted data and reformatted it to meet the URISA and TELUS standards for emergency addressing data.

The federal/provincial share of funds came to $729,368.00. With the contributions of the regional district and its local funding partners, the total cost of the project will be approximately $1.5 million.

Once it had all the necessary funding in place, the RDKS began working with various stakeholders to make 9-1-1 service a reality including the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George and TELUS.

In order to reduce the operational cost of the service, the RDKS entered into an agreement with the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George to provide 9-1-1 call answering and fire dispatch and communications services. As the Primary Public Safety Answering Point, all 9-1-1 calls generated within the RDKS are answered at the Prince George RCMP Operational Communications Centre. As part of the agreement with the RDFFG, 17 fire departments in the RDKS, will be dispatched and supported, through the Prince George Fire Operations Communications Centre. All ambulance calls will be forwarded to the BC Ambulance Service central dispatch centre located in Kamloops.

The RDKS and TELUS worked in partnership to ensure technology in the area was upgraded allowing access to emergency services. TELUS invested more than $140,000 during the project to build the required telecommunications infrastructure and create a new addressing system allowing fast routing of emergency calls and information about where the calls are coming from.

“It is gratifying to see this important project finished, giving RDKS residents the same access to 9-1-1 as people living in Prince George or Vancouver,” said Bobby Gessner, director of TELUS Network Operations in the region. “TELUS is committed to continually providing access to emergency services to our clients all across B.C., and it was a pleasure to work with the regional district to help make that happen.”

The new 9-1-1 system serves RDKS residents living in the areas of Kitimat, Terrace, and the Hazeltons from Kitwanga to Moricetown and in Stewart.

Pacific Alliance Technologies (www.pat.ca) has had a long partnership with Northern communities – and in particular the Kitimat-Stikine RD and the City of Terrace.  This is a legacy from eleven years ago when the firm that evolved into PAT (Pacific Cascade Technologies) had an office in Terrace.  PAT has been a supplier to Northern Communities from the start.