The latest local news, weather and high school sports in and around Columbia and Jefferson City

With most college students and young families only using cell phones, are they as protected as they would be if they had a landline phone when they call 911?

The answers may surprise you.

Cole County 911 operators use a Phase II system.  That system uses GPS to plot the exact location of wireless callers on a map by longitude and latitude.  A Phase I system only plots the location of the cell tower being used by the caller.  It takes a computer only a couple of seconds to plot a Phase II wireless call.  So if you call 911 and immediately hang up, a Phase II center computer has time to plot your location.

Cole County Communications Supervisor Angie Stiefermann said, “We can come up to a couple of feet to a couple of yards away.  It makes a big difference if it’s in a highly populated area whether we’re going to actually find the person that called versus a more rural area where it’s a little more easier to find that one or two people that have a cell phone and have an emergency.”

Boone County 911 operators were the first in Missouri to use the Phase II system back in 2003.  The majority of 911 calls to a Phase II center can be tracked.  However there are a few exceptions with some Trac phones.  Cell phones without GPS, such as older phones or pay as you go phones, usually don’t work with Phase II centers.

Boone County Emergency Management Director Zim Schwartze said, “They’re not from an established company that has established towers in places for us to get that information from.  They are not quite as reliable as phones from some of the companies that everyone is familiar with that are out there.”

Callaway County 911 operators have a Phase II center, but they have to take a few extra seconds to get on the internet and manually look up the latitude and longitude of cell phone callers.  Beginning next month, they’ll upgrade to the same automatic mapping system used by Boone County 911 operators.

Callaway County 911 Director Shelly Anderson said, “Once the GeoCom mapping system comes in, it will actually pop up on the screen, exactly where the cell phone is located.”

Boone County Emergency Officials are already preparing for the latest 911 technology called Next Generation 911 that routes calls more accurately and responds to almost any situation including natural disasters.

Counties without Phase II technology in the KRCG viewing area include Howard, Maries, Moniteau, Montgomery, Morgan and Saline.