LISBON — The Columbiana County 911 Program Review Committee discussed establishing a protocol for how to dispatch automatic 911 calls from newer phones or vehicles that have crash-detection systems at its meeting Thursday.

“The new phones and new cars are automatically detecting crashes and calling 911. We need to set up some sort of procedure or protocol for the call-takers to follow as to who to send to that,” Highlandtown Fire Chief Jeremiah Cole said.

Cole explained that some newer phone models have the crash detection automatically set up and it must be turned off. He said he has seen two of the automatic calls come in and they were handled differently each time.

A woman in Highlandtown was fishing and set her iPhone on the hood of the car. The car traveled about a mile down the road and the phone fell off of the car, detected a crash, and called 911.

Cole recommended that dispatchers at one of the five public safety answering points (PSAPs) send police, fire, and emergency medical services to any automatic 911 call.

“I personally, as fire chief, think they should send police, fire, and EMS when that call comes in, because you don’t know if a phone fell off the car or the car hit a pole,” Cole said.

County Commissioner Tim Weigle, chair of the committee, suggested reconvening the standard operating procedure (SOP) committee to add an addendum to the dispatcher protocol.

In other business, a PC has been installed to work as a “spillover” between the call-handling equipment and the Sundance servers for the county’s 911 dispatching system, County Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director and 911 Coordinator Brian Rutledge said.

“It’s working well,” he said.

Also, the process has been started with Spectrum to eliminate a circuit that was previously being used at a cost of $500 a month, he said.

Rutledge also described Solocom’s work on the new call-handling software that is supposed to be fully implemented the first week of October.

Recorders are being replaced at each of the county’s PSAPs and quotes for the new system are currently being reviewed. Rutledge said they have two quotes, both in the neighborhood of $200,000.

“I think all the PSAPs (Public Service Answering Points) are in agreement that moving forward we need to try to integrate the radios and phones into one headset,” Rutledge said. “So the dispatcher is not working with multiple phones, headsets, and microphones.”

Rutledge also updated the committee on the RapidSOS information system being used at the PSAPs.

He said RapidSOS is an intelligent safety company that has over 200 different companies that have bought into the program, which is a database platform that provides information about 911 calls.

“It’s not meant to replace our 911 mapping, but it will work in conjunction with it,” Rutledge said. “It is part of the Solocom package.”

“They’re a wealth of knowledge,” he said.