This highly urbanized city is conducting a test run of the operation of the Bacolod City Geofenced 911 Emergency Response Hotline ahead of its official launch later this week.
Once unveiled, Bacolod City will become the first local government unit in Negros Island Region to adopt the state-of-the-art emergency response system.
Mayor Greg Gasataya said in an interview on Monday the city’s operations center has been certified to go live, following the inspection conducted by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Emergency 911 National Office.
“We will launch the localized 911 this week. The DILG conducted an inspection last Thursday and Friday. We are testing it, we have started receiving calls up to now,” he added.
In last week’s coordination meeting, the mayor met with the DILG team, staff of PLDT, which provides the telecommunications and information technology infrastructure for the system, and personnel of the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (CDRRMO).
Gasataya said the DILG provided technical support, equipment and manpower to the city government during the project development.
“This time, since it’s localized, all 911 calls will be answered in Bacolod City. Time element is very important and necessary. Every minute saved and a faster response would definitely save lives,” he added.
Geofence refers to the virtual boundary around a physical area using global positioning system, Wi-Fi, radio-frequency identification or cellular data.
Such 911 technology, which places a geofence on the local government unit’s area of responsibility, has the capability of providing the location of a call from the start and matching the caller with the nearest responder locations.
Bacolodnons can dial only the three numbers and they will be directly connected to the city’s own operations center located at the CDRRMO headquarters in Barangay Taculing.
Under the usual system, all emergency calls from Bacolod still had to pass through the operations centers, either in Cebu or in Negros Occidental.
“Since last year, employees from each department have been chosen and trained to become first responders. We are also continuously reaching out and working hand in hand with emergency response volunteer groups in Bacolod City,” Gasataya said. (PNA)