In early January, Park County’s 911 system went down for an extended period. 

Departments shared alternative numbers on social media to call in the meantime, but the issue has remained in the minds of local leaders, as evidenced at a Thursday discussion between county commissioners, various county and city leaders and legislators from across the Big Horn Basin held at the Cody library. 

Commissioner Dossie Overfield asked if there was anything being done at the state level to solve the issue of aging emergency systems. 

“That is a system, as we found out, [that] is ancient and needs a lot of help,” she said. 

Turns out, there is indeed a bill in the works this Legislative session. 

Senate File 32, sponsored by the corporations committee, directs the department of transportation to conduct an independent study and provides funding for the study. 

The bill directs $3 million in funding for grants to departments to cover the gap between what counties currently receive for the systems and what is needed to keep them up until a new solution is determined, while another $750,000 is earmarked to conduct the study.

Monte McClain, communications supervisor with the Park County Sheriff’s Office, said in an opinion piece following the outage that departments were working with the Legislature to obtain funding to upgrade to a new network, “what we call Next Generation 9-1-1 or NG9-1-1 which would move these important call systems to a broadband or IP network. The benefits of this would allow us to use a broadband-based network that can automatically reroute the traffic around a break in a line to ensure uninterrupted communications.”

He said the new service would allow departments to transfer calls across state lines, receive text messages, pictures and even video from callers, which, he said, gives first responders the best information available to them while responding. 

“Information is key and the sooner we can implement this technology the better it will be for the residents of Wyoming,” McClain wrote.