WINNSBORO – A new, free 9-1-1 service is now available to residents of Fairfield County according to Fairfield County Public Safety officials.
The service, Smart911, allows individuals to create a Safety Profile online that will provide key information to 9-1-1 call takers and save critical time during an emergency.
“Smart911 has proven to save lives nationwide,” Phyllis Watkins, County Emergency Management Director, said. The Safety Profile can be for an individual or for a household and includes any information the individual or family might want 9-1-1 and response teams to have in the event of an emergency.
The Smart911 app provides greater access to the lifesaving benefits of Smart911 and targeted location based alerts.
It works like this – go online to www.smart911.com or get the Smart911 App and enter the Safety Profile information. The Smart911 App is available on the Apple Store or Google Play, and provides greater access to the lifesaving benefits of Smart911 and also provides targeted locationbased alerts.
Items that might be included in the Safety Profile are: number of pets in the home, vehicle details in the event of an accident and even emergency contacts. All information is optional and the person entering the information has the ability to choose what details they want to include.
Then, when that individual makes an emergency call, his/her Safety Profile automatically pops up for the 9-1-1 call taker to see, allowing them to send the right response teams to the right location with the right information.
The problem with a call from a mobile phone is that it does not provide an address to the 9-1-1 call taker. But with Smart911, both home and work addresses can be linked to mobile phones which can then pass them along to responders in the field for a more detailed, rapid response to the correct location.
“Those who create a Safety Profile will be better prepared in all towns and counties that support Smart 911 across the country,” Watkins said. “The Safety Profile travels with you and the additional information provided allows us to send the right response teams faster.
“Emergency situations are often the worst events of a person’s life, and the Safety Profile can speak for you when you might not be able to speak for yourself,” Watkins said.
Smart911 is currently available in 40 states and in more than 1,500 municipalities across the country. Emergency outcomes that have been positively impacted by Smart911 include a missing child whose photo and physical description were immediately available to 9-1-1.
Fairfield County residents are encouraged to create their Safety Profiles with Smart911 now to have their information immediately available to 9-1-1 when an emergency occurs. By creating the profile, residents will also receive emergency notifications.
Smart911 is private and secure, is only used for emergency responses and is only made available to the 9-1-1 system in the event of an emergency call.
