Union County is one of the only counties in this region that doesn’t have a 911 central dispatch. Henderson has one; Webster has one; and Crittenden County has one.
According to the Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS), Union County’s central dispatch is the Kentucky State Police Post in Henderson.
When you call 911, dispatchers at KSP Henderson answer, says Vernon Martin, county emergency management director. Then they transfer the call either to Morganfield, Sturgis or the Ambulance Service.
“The system works,” Martin said, “but it could work a lot better. And it’s my job to plan ahead.”
Martin says it gets really hectic when we have severe weather emergencies in the county. “There are three (receiving dispatches) in the county but they cannot communicate with each other by radio." All are on different frequencies. "It’s hard to coordinate efforts,” he said.
Because Union County has seen so much weather in the past year, Martin, county and local governments are stepping up talks about a central dispatch location.
“This has been a hot topic for years, before I had this job,” he said. “But, it’s a doable thing now. It will take a joint effort, an effort involving all cities in the county.”
Martin has met with Judge Jenkins and the Fiscal Court previously and members of the Morganfield City Council this week. All the emergency services he as spoken with are in united agreement for a central dispatch.
It will take a lot of talking and planning to make this happen, and still it won’t happen overnight. Martin expects it will take two years to coordinate the creation of a central dispatch. With grants and monies budgeted by the county, Martin feels like we have enough to do it. But having enough funding to start a project is not enough, he says, and we need to plan how we will maintain the necessary computer equipment, software and radios needed to make this work.
“That’s where it will have to be a collaboration of cities,” he says, where everyone chips in, plus the continual 911 funding from landline and wireless phones that the county could receive from CMRS, because they would then have a certified central dispatch.
As it stands now, Morganfield’s 24-hour receiving station dispatches for the City of Morganfield and the northern half of the county. City Police, Fire, Utilities, Uniontown Police, Fire, Water Rescue, Morganfield Rescue Squad, and three county volunteer fire departments receive calls through the Morganfield dispatch.
Sturgis’s 24-hour dispatches routes calls for the southern portion of the county. City Police, Fire, Utilities, Sturgis Rescue Squad, three county volunteer fire departments and County Coroner are dispatched through Sturgis.
The third receiving dispatch in Union County is at Methodist Hospital Union County for the Ambulance Service.
“The system works,” Martin reiterated. But a central dispatch would make communication easier.
