In a message dated Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:19:38 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com_ (mailto: snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com) writes:
Suburban cities--even old, established ones without such great growth--have other problems. In Bethany, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, there was a case several months or a year or more ago where someone complained about no one answering a 911 call. It turned out there was one officer on duty in the police station, also serving as dispatcher and 911 answerer, but two 911 lines. He was already busy of the first 911 line. I haven't seen a call box in years...in fact I never saw one in Oklahoma City. It had fire alarm boxes, where you pulled down the handle, and it pulsed the number to the equipment in the fire dispatcher's office, and printed it out on tape, or perhaps the dispatcher simply read the punches in the tape. The city had grown many times since the prime days of the fire boxes, and they existed only in close-in locations. But the entire city was divided into theoretical or virtual call box areas, and a fire call (on the telephone) was referenced to a card file (rather extensive by that time) listing every street and its theoretical fire box area. The card also showed what equipment from what fire station should respond to a call in that area, and also had additional listings showing the responding stations and equipment if there was more than one alarm. This was in the 1950s. As I recall, "two alarm", "three alarm", etc., did not mean the number of persons who called in alarms or pulled fire boxes, but the judgment of the responding fire fighters (then called firemen) as to what additional help was needed. Of course, the card files also showed schools, hotels, multi-story office buildings and other places of public assembly, and they were automatically multiple-alarm fires and got the appropriate response. Unless the report was made by telphone (as it almost always was) and the caller described the nature of the alarm. That was one reason the fire department disliked fire alarm boxes--they gave no indication of the nature of the fire or how serious it was, while a report by telephone could provide valuable information. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com