Firm helps 911 locate people crying for help – RedSky’s system may get a boost from states’ laws

Sophisticated telecom technology that makes it easier to call someone can, paradoxically, also make it harder for police, fire and paramedic personnel to find them when responding to 911 calls.

By Jon Van
Chicago Tribune staff reporter

The days are long gone when most emergency calls were dialed from a plain old residence where a simple street address was enough to deliver help to the right place. Calls for help now are just as likely to come from cell phones or from museums, schools and office buildings where it is difficult to pinpoint the source of distress.

The technology to provide public safety dispatchers with the precise location within a building of a 911 caller is available, but seldom used.

One small Chicago business, RedSky Technologies Inc., is trying to change that by selling an affordable enhanced 911 software package to companies in large office buildings.

It is not just a way to avert disaster–systems to pinpoint caller locations within large buildings are required by law in Illinois and a growing number of states.

"Every year, there are horror stories where we cannot get the information before something terrible happens," Nancy Pollock, executive director of Metro 911 in Minneapolis, said about the time 911 operators now need to spend on the phone to get enough information to help.

The Federal Communications Commission requires that wireless phone carriers adopt location technology to give dispatchers a good idea of where cell phone users are.

Mandating location technology for callers from large buildings is more difficult, said Pollock, who also chairs a subcommittee on wireless telephone location for the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials.

"The FCC can recommend equipment standards for carriers, but it has no jurisdiction over private businesses," she said.

Pollock and her colleagues have lobbied state legislatures to mandate location technology for private branch exchange, or PBX, phone systems used by large organizations.

They are pushing for state laws modeled after one passed in Illinois following the 1987 death of a woman who died of smoke inhalation on the 20th floor of a Chicago office building in the Illinois Center complex. Firefighters were delayed by confusion about her location.

"The problem just grows every year," said Pollock. "Now we’re seeing more apartment complexes that have PBX systems. The landlords include phone service as part of the rent. We’ve had emergency responders going up and down corridors at 3 a.m., pounding on doors looking for a heart attack victim."

Pollock said some states have joined Illinois in requiring what is known as enhanced 911, or E911, and others will follow.

"I see it happening state by state in a slow march," she said.

That’s good news for Anthony Maier, whose Chicago-based RedSky is a leading provider of E911 technology.

RedSky, which has grown to 25 employees since it started as a computer systems integration firm in 1995, got into E911 four years ago when a client sought help in making itself compliant with the Illinois E911 law.

"We wrote the software and once we did it, we realized we could productize this," said Maier. "So we got a patent."

Large enterprises are voicing interest in E911 even in states that don’t mandate it, said Maier. Deadly outbursts, such as the Columbine High School killings, and workplace violence have underscored the difficulties of dispatching emergency personnel, he said.

But the new technology is being embraced gradually, at best.

The Illinois Commerce Commission is charged with supervising 911 in the state and provides rules covering technical matters. It also mediates any problems between phone carriers and public safety offices.

But the ICC does not check whether businesses are complying with the E911 law, said Edward Hurley, ICC chairman.

"The ICC doesn’t have inspectors that go checking on this," he said.

In Illinois, where E911 has been required since 2000 for buildings larger than 40,000 square feet that use PBX phone systems, probably a majority are still non-compliant, said James Carlini, a telecom consultant based in East Dundee.

"I’d say that maybe 40 to 50 percent are compliant," said Carlini. "More large companies are working toward that, and I’m working with some of them. But others aren’t. There’s no real enforcement of the law, so many say, `Why spend $50,000 or $60,000 to upgrade?’

"But they’re really taking a chance."

Should any mishap occur that included location difficulties for emergency responders, the owner of an enterprise that didn’t comply with the law would face severe legal liability, Carlini said.

It is comparable to the recent Chicago porch collapse and deaths that subsequently focused legal attention upon long-ignored city regulations regarding porches, said Mark Lies, a partner with the Chicago law firm Seyfarth Shaw.

For example, worker’s compensation regulations put a cap of $700,000 to $1 million that an employer must pay when an employee dies in some work-related event. But if that same employer’s failure to install E911 was implicated, lawyers for the employee’s estate would likely get that cap lifted and take their case to a jury, Lies said.

"This may be a sleeping giant until we get some big incident," said Lies, "but the potential liabilities are there. Legal advisers will point them out to clients, encouraging adoption of E911 technology."

Maintaining E911 can be a formidable task, said Ross Robilotta, telecom manager for the Midwest region of Deloitte & Touche, the professional services provider. In the organization of 2,400 people that Robilotta oversees, employees are constantly moving and changing the locations of their phones.

Robilotta calculated that keeping his E911 database updated would require about $40,000 a year just in personnel costs, so he opted to outsource the service to RedSky. "It would’ve been an administrative nightmare for me," he said.

Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune

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