County 911 system introducing free app to improve safety

Three words that could save a life. 

Lancaster County 911 is implementing a free app called What3Words that can provide precise locations for emergency responders, saving time and potentially lives. Here is how it works.

“A lot of places may not have a numbered street address [and have] callers who might be scared and panicked and are lost. If they have the app, our dispatchers and responders can find them using a unique three word combination that will pinpoint the location within a ten-foot-by-ten-foot area,” said Erin Kauffman with the Lancaster County Emergency Communications Center.

The map is divided into those ten-by-ten-foot squares, each with the unique three word combination to pinpoint the exact location.

Kauffman said, “It is especially useful in remote areas such as trails and bodies of water, places where landmarks and service could be absent, making it difficult to find lost or injured individuals.”

He noticed the What3Words app while working in the 911 Center. 

I was looking at the screen and thought, what in the world is that? I dug deeper into it and realized the accuracy it has in communicating a location,” he told the The Independence.

Kauffman says the app isn’t new. It was first used in England about thirteen years ago, but it is just being introduced in Central Pennsylvania and Lancaster County. Kauffman brought the idea to the attention of the Department of Public Safety Executive Director Brian Pasquale.

“Erin was very passionate about it,” he said. “She asked, ‘Do you think anybody would use and like this?’ I said, ‘Yeah! It makes a whole lot of sense.’” You think of natural disasters such as Joplin and Katrina, where landmarks were destroyed and people [were] hurt during tornadoes [and] hurricanes, and how the app could help.”

He recounted how he’s had to “go door to door at times in the middle of the night trying to locate an emergency victim who couldn’t give a precise location.” And even if someone hasn’t downloaded the app, Pasquale and Kauffman say, no problem, at least not on an Apple phone. Dispatchers and responders can text a link.

The public safety officers presented the What3Words app to the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners who were all in favor of adopting it, making Lancaster County one of the first in Central Pennsylvania to employ it in the emergency response system.

“This could save a life,” Commissioner Josh Parsons (R) said. “We’re all for helping to improve public safety, helping the public and our first responders. We want to get the word out.”

Some concerns were raised about the app center around inaccurate coordinates or words spelled wrong by dispatchers. But Kauffman says the What3Words app has already been used here to help rescue someone. 

“We used it to rescue an individual stranded on the Susquehanna River,” Kauffman relayed. “We got the three-word codes and found the exact rocks where he was stranded.

She says there are 527 trillion combinations of the ten-by-ten coordinates using different three-word combinations. Users can hit the arrow or pin on the screen to activate the location finder and three words will appear on the screen.

Pasquale says Lancaster County with many hiking trails, country roads, bodies of water and tourists, is a prime place where the What3Words app could be needed, helping folks who may not be familiar with the area, who find themselves in trouble.

Kauffman is planning to train with the Lancaster County Park Rangers to expand the scope of the app. 

Addressing privacy concerns about the app, Pasquale said, “It does not collect personal data or track anyone.”

Lancaster County’s IT Department has vetted the app as well to make sure it’s safe and effective to use. Emergency workers believe it’s worth implementing and the time saved could make a difference in saving a life.

“[For] a caller [who] needs help and doesn’t know where they are, feeling hopeless, cutting down on response time could be huge,” Kauffman said. 

Barbara Barr is a former reporter for WGAL in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Valley where she led political coverage that earned a Walter Cronkite Award.