The Burnsville Breakfast Rotary Club welcomed Mr. Tom Foley who was the guest speaker at our December 23rd. meeting at The Original Pancake House. Tom is the Executive Director of the Dakota County 911 Communications Center which handles all 911 calls for service within Dakota County, MN. Due to the importance of this building to handle emergencies during major weather events, the building was constructed to withstand wind speeds of up to 150 MPH (F-2 tornado), and the data room and backup area can withstand winds of 300 MPH (F-5 tornado). The communications center has 66 employees of which 53 are dispatchers to service a county of 440,000, and is located at the SE corner of 160th St. and Hwy. 3 in Rosemont, MN.
Key Statistics
• Handled 311,000 phone calls in 2020, with 55-60% being 911 calls for service
• About 85-90% of all calls come from wireless phone lines which can be difficult to pinpoint if there aren’t enough cell towers near to triangulate a caller’s position
• Texts to 911 are a very small part of emergency 911 communications
• Approximately 90% of all calls are for law enforcement response, and 10% for fire/rescue
• The radio dispatch system is a statewide trunked 800MHz system and allows interoperability throughout the state of Minnesota to communicate in real-time to all agencies
If you’d like to learn more about Dakota County’s 911 Communication Center, please click here: https://www.mn-dcc.org/
