Is the Community Owner Responsible when 911 Can't Get There in Time? By Mark J. Fletcher, ENP

“This is 911, what is your location?” 240 million times each year, 911 is dialed for emergency help. That equates to a staggering 27,400 phone calls per hour, or over 7 calls per second, 365 days a year. At the other end of the line are a team of 911 Call Takers, that answer these calls, confirm the address, and triage the emergency. For residential or commercial buildings, the location is typically a street address, and easily understood. However, especially with the proliferation of cellular phones, emergency callers are not always at ‘a typical address’, or the reported address covers a large geographic area, making it impossible to accurately locate the person needing help. 

Many environments, such as a Manufactured Home Community, may be large tracts of private property made up of private roads. The address of a residence may simply be a common address for the main facility accompanied by a non-descript identifier. Since it is considered private property, similar to a private golf course, the municipality rarely undertakes the expense of documenting these roads into their map solutions, let alone keep up with modifications and changes. Exasperating the situation is the recent phenomenon known as ‘cutting the cord’ where the use of landlines has dropped at alarming rates in exchange for cellular phones.

Current Headlines: “Can You Find Me Now?” Landline 911 calls deliver the telephone number of the caller to the 911 Emergency Call Center (ECC); and matching that number to a street address, based on the physical installation records. Cellular phones have no installation record, and no fixed street address. Citizens often mistakenly assume that Public Safety can easily locate these devices since, “Cell phones have GPS, and the Police can ‘ping’ them to determine their location”. That works fine in movies, but the reality is very different. 

The 911 network is blind to the location information of a cellular phone. There is no network connection between the ECC 911 center and the cellular network, and the cellular carrier must be manually queried for that information on a callby-call basis. This results in a dangerous and potentially lifethreatening delay. In a private community containing private roads, hundreds of units may share a common physical address.

Since many manufactured home residences fall under this problematic category, what is the responsibility of the park or facility management team? In more and more situations, property owners are caught up in litigation, where they are accused of creating an unsafe environment, or permitting one to knowingly exist.

Juries can assign liability based on an owner or landlord’s knowledge of an existing hazardous condition and allowing it to continue, even if the tenant was responsible for creating the condition. In fact, case law is continually increasing and building where tenants are being awarded sizable judgements when such incidents occur.

Fortunately, technological advances now allow community owners to address this 911 location problem with an integrated software platform called Next Generation 911. Ignoring your 911 location issue only creates another liability issue which is viewed unfavorably by juries.

Cellular vs ‘Land Line’ Telephone usage Data shows upwards of 80% of all 911 emergency calls are placed from a cellular device. Current smartphones utilize handset-based location information when the device initiates a 911 call within a defined boundary and can deliver that information to Next Generation 911 equipped call centers.  

This new technology provides highly accurate location detail (down to 1 square meter) along with an intelligent, localized, on-site notification information to emergency responders, as well as to facility staff, who are alerted whenever a cellular 911 call is made from inside the park complex. This is accomplished using a ‘geo-fence’ boundary of the property and enables management to take a proactive role in the response to the problem. 

Since geo-fenced based technology can easily be provided to residents at little to no cost or as part of their maintenance charges, it can add local situational awareness and safety, not only to the facility management team, but to residents. With the technology focused on the device level, both residents and non-residents benefit from this highly accurate location service within their community. Additional response policies and procedures can now be defined and put into place to add value. For example, knowing an event response is in progress, staff can provide an escort to emergency service responders, leading them directly to the unit, even assisting with unit access if authorized. This makes “safety services” a significant addition to the current services offered by the property owner / landlord. 

Additionally, emergency contact information can be easily provided to public safety responders. Limited or secured access limitations are removed providing a clear path to the specified unit. Alerts only share event location information with the manufactured home community operator and are ‘optedin’ by each resident which eliminates privacy issues. Providing this information and removing access impediments, which eat away invaluable life-saving seconds, gives community owners and tenants an additional layer of trust, knowing everyone is doing all they possibly can to keep residents safe.

Mitigating Emergency Response and Limiting Liability The effort to streamline 911 emergency procedures within your community could save lives and dramatically reduce the costly liability exposure facing community owners. Everything proactively done by community owners to make their property safer reduces liability, reduces losses, and improves resident well-being.

Written By: Mark J. Fletcher, ENP VP Public Safety Solutions, 911inform, LLC