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Legislative bills

Bipartisan Bill to Enhance 9-1-1 Emergency Response System Passes Senate

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

Senators Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) announced that their bipartisan Enhancing First Response Act has passed the Senate. The legislation aims to improve Americans' ability to reach help when dialing 9-1-1, including during natural disasters, and make important updates to the classification of 9-1-1 dispatchers. This bill is crucial to strengthening the nation's 9-1-1 emergency response system and recognizing dispatchers for their lifesaving work.

Key Takeaways:

  • The Enhancing First Response Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Lujan, Heinrich, Klobuchar, and Blackburn, makes significant updates to the nation's 9-1-1 emergency reporting system to improve Americans' ability to reach help when dialing 9-1-1, including during natural disasters.
  • The legislation requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to issue a report after major natural disasters on the extent to which people were unable to reach 9-1-1 during the disaster and subsequent recovery efforts.
  • The FCC must also study unreported 9-1-1 outages and develop recommendations to improve outage reporting and communication between mobile carriers experiencing network outages and 9-1-1 centers.
  • The classification of 9-1-1 dispatchers will be updated from clerical workers to protective service workers in the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) to better reflect the life-saving work they perform each day.
  • Senators Lujan, Heinrich, Klobuchar, and Blackburn collaborated with Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D) and Senators Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Angus King (I-Maine), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to cosponsor the bill.

Statistics:

  • The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must issue a report on 9-1-1 outages after major natural disasters.
  • The FCC will study the extent to which people were unable to reach 9-1-1 during natural disasters and subsequent recovery efforts (no specific numbers provided).
  • The legislation targets to improve the resiliency and reliability of 9-1-1 services and ensure dispatchers are recognized for their lifesaving work.

Sources:

  • Lujan, Heinrich, Klobuchar, and Blackburn. (2022). Enhancing First Response Act Press Release.
  • Kari's Law. (2018). A law requiring multi-line telephone system manufacturers to create systems that allow callers to reach 9-1-1 without dialing a prefix or postfix.

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