Peninsula Fiber Network and Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office partner to provide safety at NASCAR Event

Aug 8

For the first time in the event’s history, 911 callers were connected directly to emergency dispatch team members physically located at the event site, “Answering emergency 911 calls directly at the track”. allowed us to better coordinate the response of police, fire, and emergency medical services for incidents at the facility and around the track”, said Lt. Corinne Perdue of the Lenawee County Sheriff’s Office. Lt. Perdue leads the 911 dispatch center for Lenawee County.

“In the past, the 911 calls were routed to our Dispatch Center in Adrian, MI where they were processed by a dispatcher there, then that dispatcher would place a call to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at the event to relay the information. Being able to receive the calls directly into the onsite EOC provided the ability to process and dispatch the calls to first responders on-site, eliminating the delay of having to relay the information from one Center to another.”

Working with their partner, Indigital, Peninsula Fiber Network (PFN) assisted in creating a geofence for the MIS event. A geofence is a virtual fence or perimeter around a real-world geographical location. For the NASCAR event, it created a virtual separation between the track, stands, surrounding campgrounds, and areas where the public gathers during the event from the rest of Lenawee County. Any calls to 911 within that geofenced area were routed directly to the emergency operations center at the track to special phones that would display the callers' physical location at the event and their callback number. “We had 77 calls during the weekend of the race and were able to assist those callers and coordinate any emergency responses immediately,” said Perdue.

“This was the first time we established a geofence during an event to route 911 calls to an onsite emergency communications center using next-generation 911 call routing,” said Tim McKee, 911 Program Director for PFN. “We have practiced it, knew it could be accomplished, and put it into production during the race. Our team worked with Lt. Perdue and her team making it a successful and historic event.”