I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
June 30, 1996
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
According to Enhanced 911 Coordinator Mary Anne Grimm, proceeds garnered from the 52nd Annual Bemidji Jaycees Water Carnival that will be donated to a fund for installing the E911 system could save lives in Beltrami County in the future.
The E911 system is an advanced version of the basic 911 service implemented in the early 1980s. The new system is designed to give emergency dispatchers immediate information concerning address and location of the calling party, according to a flyer distributed by the Jaycees.
The information from an emergency call will be immediately available on a computer screen and will also tell the dispatcher which ambulance, First Responder unit or law enforcement units should respond to the call. "Thus precious minutes are saved and potentially lives," states the flyer.
Under the old 911 system, the caller was required to give the dispatcher all the important information needed to get emergency units to the scene. The caller would have to report the address of the emergency, directions to the emergency site, the type of emergency, the caller's name and a phone number at which the caller could be reached.
In addition, a route number or a Highway Contract Route number was useless because it is not an identifiable address, so detailed instructions are needed from the caller.
"What we currently have is basically a phone that rings," Grimm said. "It will tell us only an area that the call is coming from."
She said the current system can only tell the area by the prefix of the phone number. The system will show the dispatcher a general area the call is from such as Kelliher, Blackduck or in the Bemidji prefix. "That's all we know when we pick up that phone," she said.
The new system will show the registered name of the phone number and a current address. All the dispatcher needs to do is verify if the address is correct and if it is the emergency site, Grimm said.
"It will be an incredible time saver," she said. "Especially to people in rural areas who need to give us instructions on how to get there."
Grimm said the money being donated by the Jaycees is especially important because all counties receiving aid for their emergency systems must have E911 installed by December 1998. The donation is "critical," she said.
"We're incredibly grateful to the Jaycees for having the foresight to help us and Beltrami County as a whole," Grimm said.
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