More than 100 people, including dozens of first responders, attended the ribbon cutting for the brand-new, state-of-the-art Union County 911 Communications Center and Mapping Office on Shoe Factory Road last Thursday, Oct. 22.
Called to celebrate the facility’s completion, the event featured a very special dedication of the building to Blairsville native Hughes Chatham, a hero of Union County public safety who passed away in 1999 but whose legacy lives on in local emergency response.
Continue reading with a free account.
North Georgia News — serving Union County since 1909.
Activities were staged out front of the new center, with guests spread across the parking area. To mark the dedication, 911 and Mapping employees set up a memorial table with photos and other items highlighting Chatham’s outstanding commitment to his many first responder roles.
“The start of 911 (in Union County) was due to a lot of people, but it was mainly due to one man,” Dyer said. “At the time, he was the EMA/EMS director: Hughes Chatham. He was the very first 911 director, and he started it here.”
Before the advent of Union County 911, Dyer said calls came into each individual emergency agency. So, not only did a firefighter have to gear up, ride out and fight a fire, but he also had to take the call, get the appropriate information and coordinate additional responders.
Chatham recognized the difficulties this caused for first responders, and, being a man of action, he marshaled the necessary resources to establish the first local 911 Center in the 1990s. This sped up response times and created a reliable way to relay information in ongoing emergencies.
“Hughes Chatham was a pretty amazing man – he wore a lot of hats (on top of being 911 director),” Dyer said. “He was a firefighter, a fire chief, Emergency Management director, the EMS director, and he was also a sheriff’s deputy at the time.”
Multiple generations of Chatham’s family attended, as did his surviving wife, Margaret, and grandson Russell “Rusty” Walker offered remarks in honor of the occasion. Walker is also a longtime local first responder, currently serving as the Assistant Chief of Blairsville Police.
“On behalf of our family, thank you for dedicating this building to him,” Walker said. “My grandad had three passions in his life: he loved the Lord, and he loved his family, and he loved Union County. I’m thankful that I got to work with him. He was that calm voice in the storm.”
Dyer welcomed Aleisha Rucker-Wright, who serves as Deputy Executive Director of the Georgia Emergency Communications Authority. She said there is a statewide initiative to upgrade 911 services, and that Union County had joined a small but proactive group.
“As we all stand here today and look at this fantastic building, what I see is not only a building, but a commitment,” Rucker-Wright said. “And that’s a commitment to 911, a commitment to your first responders, and a commitment to all of the citizens and visitors of Union County.”
What was not so easy to see that day, she said, was “probably the largest upgrade that your county has been through” in terms of 911 technology, “that is, upgrading from our old, outdated 911 system to Next Generation 911.”
Continuing, “Most people that we serve do not realize that … over 80% of 911 centers in Georgia are still using the exact same infrastructure to get the 911 call from the 911 caller to the appropriate 911 center that was used in the 1970s.
“Union County has joined a group of less than 20% of the state who have made a commitment to upgrade to Next Generation 911.”
To explain the significance, Rucker-Wright used a simple analogy of landline telephones versus smartphones. Similar to a landline, old 911 infrastructure, like what exists at the current dispatch center on Hunt-Martin Street, is very limited in what it can do.
“Whereas in Next Generation 911, your jurisdiction and your leadership, who has been very forward-thinking in what it means to serve you, has built the infrastructure to be able to do pretty much all the same robust capabilities of your smartphone,” Rucker-Wright said.
Ultimately, Next Gen 911 does away with obsolete analog systems in favor of faster, more accurate fiber-optic networking that brings upgraded capabilities like satellite GPS, video, texting, interagency call/data transfers, and more, plus the ability to be expanded in the future.
“I think about how fantastic that is for those who are in need of help, and how fantastic it is for those who are on the other end of the phone answering and looking for locations, and for first responders,” Rucker-Wright said.
The biggest question now is, “when are we going to open?” Dyer said of the new facility.
“Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to have a lot of testing going on here, and we’re going to have a lot of training for the dispatchers,” Dyer added. “Once that’s all complete and we’re 100% ready to go, we will start a new 911 Center with the Next Gen 911 here. And we will give out that date.”
Dyer concluded by recognizing the many people who have made the new 911 Center possible, including both the past and present Commissioner’s Office administrations, and his hardworking staff led by 911 Lt. Millie Baxter with assistance from Dispatcher Amanda Hammond.
He also thanked the people of Union County for supporting the 1% Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, the proceeds of which paid for construction of the building and purchasing all the necessary 911 equipment – a roughly $5 million total community investment.
“Without your penny, without your SPLOST money, without your help and support, we cannot do things like this,” Dyer said. “So, thank you very much for that.”
Members of the Blairsville-Union County Chamber of Commerce then led everyone in a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and the 911 Center was opened for limited tours before the larger public open house later that evening.
