Essay --

Philip Covarrubias Covarrubias 1 Fire 100-30 Friday 1300-1550 12-06-2013 Communications Center My name is Philip Covarrubias, and I’m going to be talking about the communications center. The Communications center, a facility where dispatchers work, is the place where most emergency agencies receive 9-1-1 calls for emergency assistance, such as the fire departments, police departments, and EMS agencies. There are many communications centers throughout the United States and in other countries. In the United States, they are divided by counties. Depending on how large the county is, it will determine how many facilities will be running. In every communications center dispatchers work with a computer system called computer-aided dispatch (or CAD for short). Dispatchers started working with these computers in the early 1970’s, and as they became more known, agencies began adopting theses computers. The function of the CAD system, using the enhanced 9-1-1 system, is to quickly find the lo...