JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (WJAC) — The Cambria County Department of Emergency Services implemented a new life saving program on Tuesday.
The program is called Prepared Live and allows Cambria County 911 services to receive G.P.S locations, multimedia and live streams from those who call using a cell phone.
“This allows the 911 dispatchers to access callers cell phones where we can send a request for a live stream or a video to see first hand what the callers reporting to us," Training Supervisor Tom Davis said.
Davis has been training Cambria County 911 dispatchers since August when this program was first introduced.
“All of our dispatchers have had trained or will complete the training very very soon," said Davis. "So yes, we're ready to go.”
Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky shared his excitement about this new emergency service and what it will offer the community.
“This is a service that’s going to help people, it's about saving lives and helping people.”
Prepared Live is activated when someone calls 911 on a smart phone and allows the dispatcher to view what the caller is seeing similar to a Facetime call.
“When that person is making that worst phone call ever they're shaken," said Chernisky. "They're describing things and now they can describe things and show it at the same time. So the person on the other end can see everything and also in a situation where they can't talk, they can type if they have to be quiet in the situation too.”
Art Martynuska the Executive Director of Cambria County E.M.A and 911 says, “We were in the first one hundred counties in the country to be doing this. Somebody once said that a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. So that real time information is going to be valuable to our folks here at 911 and to our first responders who are coming on scene.”
Officials from the Cambria County Emergency Services say this service is available to the public now.
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