Local 911 Authorities Set New Emergency Response Standard

Seven Local 911 Authorities Set New Standard for Emergency Response Under FCC 911 Regulations

Published: April 8, 2025

Despite clear lessons from Hurricane Katrina and other devastating disasters, most emergency communication centers remain unprepared to fully comply with current FCC 911 regulations, specifically those mandating critical data interoperability. But recently, six counties and one parish have taken groundbreaking steps to align with these regulations and avoid future communication breakdowns.

In West Virginia, Boone County Emergency Management Agency, Lincoln County 9-1-1, Logan County Emergency Operations Center, and Barbour County Office of Emergency Management 911 have joined this effort. In Nevada, Elko County Regional Communications Center and Louisiana's Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office have made similar strides. For Livingston Parish, past communication failures aren't hypothetical—they already happened during the severe flooding of 2016.

What occurred in the Baton Rouge area wasn't a hurricane—but the damage was equally catastrophic. That August, a slow-moving storm drenched Livingston Parish with over 31 inches of rain over four days—more flooding than Katrina had left behind—crippling local emergency infrastructure. Livingston Parish lost all emergency communication capabilities except basic voice and radio, forcing emergency personnel to physically rescue critical 911 servers by hand.

In this blog, you’ll discover how Livingston Parish is proactively meeting FCC 911 regulations by revolutionizing its emergency communications with NG911 technology—and how your local emergency services could learn from their experience before a similar disaster occurs.

Meeting FCC 911 Regulations: Lessons from Livingston Parish Flood

In 2017, following Livingston's severe flooding, 1Spatial’s director of public safety, Sandi Stroud, worked as a consultant with the NAPSG Foundation to coordinate an after-action workshop in Baton Rouge. During the workshop, first responders, emergency management leaders, and GIS experts identified major interoperability gaps and inefficiencies in the parish’s response systems, highlighting urgent FCC compliance issues.

A key problem identified was the inefficient manual transfer of 911 call details due to incompatibility between different computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. Calls had to be manually recorded on paper after being rerouted to neighboring East Baton Rouge 911—a scenario that significantly delayed rescue efforts.

The National Guard, Coast Guard, State Police, and even civilian groups like the Cajun Navy struggled to coordinate responses due to these interoperability failures, noting the difficulty in taking those paper lists of 911 calls and organizing a way to follow up on them. Interoperability issues were high on the list of issues to tackle to be better prepared in the future.

Livingston Parish’s Pioneering Steps Toward FCC Compliance

On March 23, 2025, Livingston Parish took decisive action to ensure full compliance with FCC 911 regulations by submitting a valid request notifying all originating service providers (OSPs) within their network footprint of their NG911 capabilities. This submission aligns with the FCC’s phased approach, mandating OSPs achieve interoperability standards within designated timeframes or potentially accelerate their compliance.

Describing the urgency behind this major update, Jack Varnardo, the parish’s 911 director, said, “Our IT director had to physically wade into our 911 center, pull the entire computer-aided dispatch (CAD) server out, and carry it through rising water to his vehicle to get it to higher ground.” Varnardo continued, “Then it took him several days to set it back up and get it running again. It was good that he could do that, of course, but we realized then that we needed to do something different because, during that flood, we had nothing but paper logs.”

Livingston Parish is now among a select group nationwide fully prepared for future emergencies, having achieved end-state NG911 architecture and compliance with essential FCC requirements. In fact, they're one of just seven 911 authorities in the country to submit a valid request to the FCC.

For an OSP, this means having six months to one year to meet phase one requirements, followed by another six months to one year for phase two, unless the parish qualifies to skip phase one altogether.

These FCC requests are akin to the first person stepping onto a frozen lake to test if it will hold weight. Which means all OSPs should proactively ensure they're ready to fulfill the valid phase one and phase two requirements, including supporting a Location Information Server (LIS).

One of the most complex hurdles OSPs face is simultaneously supporting two different database structures until all 911 authorities nationwide complete their transitions. For providers and emergency services still navigating the complexities of FCC regulations and interoperability requirements, solutions like 1Locate offer immediate compliance and ongoing support, ensuring they're not left vulnerable when disaster strikes again.

For Livingston Parish, adherence to these regulations means robust NG911 architecture—ensuring they're far better equipped to handle emergencies moving forward.