How Technology Helped Find a Missing Hiker

Tyler Podcast Episode 12, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

When a hiker goes missing in a large area in Greene County, New York, the 911 Emergency Operations Center turns to technology to solve a very important problem. Hear how some quick, creative thinking turned a potentially scary situation into another day at the park.

Transcript

Neil Keliher: That's what we're all here for. We're here to make sure that everybody goes home at the end of the day, whether it be the people that call 911, or the people that we send because you called 911. Yeah, that's what we're here for and we're great to be able to do it.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast where we tackle issues facing communities today and do so in a way that's both entertaining and enlightening. I'm your host, Jeff Harrell, and I'm the Director of Content Marketing for Tyler Technologies. I really, really appreciate you listening. The problem that we're tackling today is all about helping citizens.

What happens when a hiker goes missing in a huge area that they may not be familiar with, and what if they're unprepared and nightfall is looming? What was a fun day on the trails can quickly turn into a very dangerous situation. And that's exactly what happened in Greene County, New York. We've got an awesome interview with Neil Keliher and Randy Elmerod from Greene County's 911 emergency operation center. I think you'll enjoy this story about how a creative thinker used technology to solve a very important problem.

Also, if you're not familiar with the term CAD, Neil and Randy refer to CAD quite often. It stands for computer aided dispatch and is a technology that allows 911 operation centers to receive and manage 911 calls and information. But without further ado, here's my conversation with Neil and Randy from Greene County.

Well, guys, as we get started, I'm down here in Texas and don't know a lot about your area and would love to hear a little bit more about Greene County.

Neil Keliher: Greene County is located about 150 miles north of Manhattan, and about 30 miles south of Albany. It's a very small rural county. We do the best we can here.

Randy Elmerod: It's approximately 653 square miles. We have a population about 56,000. We have two major ski attractions in our backyard. And then we are also the home of the Kaaterskill Park, which attracts about several hundred hikers throughout the year. The Kaaterskill Park is where our story that we will be talking about actually took place about two years ago to the date is about when it happened. Ultimately it's a small rural county. We've been operating with Tyler Technologies for the last one-

Neil Keliher: It'll be two years October, two years in October.

Jeff Harrell: And who lives in the county? Is it people that commute into the city or is it people that just live and work in that community or maybe retired people, maybe all of the above? Who makes up your county?

Randy Elmerod: Right. We don't have too many people that I know of that actually transferred down to the city of New York. It's a more of a bedroom type community. They prefer or for what I see travel to the north for work. So it's basically here as a bedroom community, but we have a lot of second homes for people out of the city who come up to the ski resorts. Both Hunter Mountain and Windham mountain are literally in our county and in our backyard.

A Background on the 911 Operations Center

Jeff Harrell: Oh, that's great. And then tell me a little bit more about your 911 emergency operations center. Randy Elmerod: Greene County 911 answers all 911 calls for the county of Greene for fire, police and medical emergencies. We dispatch for 27 volunteer fire companies, 12 EMS agencies, and seven police departments. We're made up of 17 dispatchers. We work 12-hour shifts anywhere from three to four dispatchers on per shift.

Jeff Harrell: So if someone's skiing and gets injured, do they call you or do the resorts have their own?

Randy Elmerod: They call us through through 911, they have their own first aid stations at the mountains, and they handle predominantly, give them minor injuries to sprains and broken bones that aren't serious, but anytime that it becomes a serious incident that requires transfer off the mountain to a trauma center, then they call us being 911. We'll start the process from there.

Neil Keliher: We would work with the first aid people at the mountain. We would go up to them and they would transfer over the patient. But regardless the mountain still calls 911 when they require a transport.

Jeff Harrell: So you guys have to be prepared with snowmobiles, maybe even helicopters, I would imagine?

Randy Elmerod: The resorts have all the snowmobiles and we do not do any of the extraction off the ski slopes itself. We'll take over patient care or the EMS agencies for the town will take over a patient care once the patient is delivered to first aid. We will not do any extractions off the ski slopes itself.

Jeff Harrell: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. And tell me a little bit about each of your roles with the county.

Randy Elmerod: Well, again, my name is Randy Elmerod. I'm the deputy director of emergency services and have been the deputy director for the last 11 years now. I've been involved in emergency services for the last 23 years. I oversee the 911 center, but also I act as liaison to the county fire coordinator's office, county EMS coordinator's office. I have to sometimes respond to incidents out in the field for field management reasons, work very closely with the emergency management office out of the state, the Office of Fire Prevention and Control from the state of New York, as well as the State Department of Health through the EMS Bureau. So that's my role.

Neil Keliher: My role here is 911 systems administrator for Greene County. And I've been in this role now since I think it was November of last year, officially. I've been employed with the county emergency services since 2007. So it'll be 13 solid years as a 911 dispatcher. I was a volunteer firefighter for the local fire company where I live. I fell into this 911 systems administrator position right after we went live with the Tyler software in October of 2018. Became pretty evident at that time, as we were building it out, that there needed to be a dedicated office or a dedicated person responsible for coordinating and making sure that all the technology continues to work, software updates are applied. It's something that we never had to worry about with our previous vendor, but Tyler is so much more involved. The results are night and day from our old vendor. We needed to make sure that we continued to have updated information and a coordinated response to anything that needs to happen. So Randy asked me to take care of it, and that's where we are. I'm very grateful. I'm very thankful to be in the position right now.

Jeff Harrell: Well, that's awesome. And you guys mentioned that in winter, it sounds like there's a lot of skiing that's happening in your area, but I would imagine during the summer, and I'm in the North Dallas area, we're very flat. You guys have the Catskills, right? So that's probably a great place in the summer to go hiking.

Randy Elmerod: That's correct. And it takes place at the state parks, within the Kaaterskill Park, which is predominantly in the town of Hunter. And this area tracks several hundred hikers at the course of a year. They have some intermediate trails and then they have some really expert trails. Not only do they have hiking, but we also have rock climbing, recreational rock climbing to several swimming holes along the Catskill Creek people migrate to during the summertime. We're plugged with either hiking accidents, rock climbing accidents, to swimming and diving accidents. It is a beautiful place to visit, but it could be very dangerous, especially with people that are sometimes inexperienced and decide to take some of the more technical hiking trails throughout the Kaaterskill Park.

At the top of the park, we have a North South Lake, which is a state owned camping ground that has two large bodies of water, has a lot of swimming. Your summertime recreation spots, we've had a few swimming accidents there, but there's also more of your beginner, intermediate walking trails around North South Lake. But we also get incidents that occur on the beginner to the intermediate trails as well, either heat exhaustion, or a person that has fallen, has sprained or to the worst of falling with a head injury and so forth. And those types of incidents, no matter where they are, either at North South Lake or within the Kaaterskill Park in the Waterfalls area, they're a prolonged event with our first responders.

Not only is it a prolonged event for the first responders, but it's also a prolonged and stressful situation for the dispatch center. Because we have to manage the chaos that is actually occurring. You know, making sure that the resources are getting to the patient. It takes quite some time for the first responders to make contact with the patient or the people that are in need. So it's not a quick situation that starts very quickly and ends very quickly. They're usually prolonged events that might take several hours. I have been on a few myself that six to eight hours is not uncommon to rescue or to get people back out to roadside so they can be tended to by the medics, the EMS agencies.

Jeff Harrell: I would imagine you've got a series of trails, you said beginner, intermediate, more advanced. So that's probably a pretty large area of trails to cover, I would imagine.

Randy Elmerod: Oh yes. And they are being used more frequently, especially this time of year with the colors starting to change on the trees, visitors to the area which they're not pretty sure about the times and stuff of that nature. So they'll go in and within three to four hours, they're not paying attention to the time, it's starting to get darker earlier. So then they become lost or disoriented with the trails because they're not familiar with it. So the park is huge. The park is a huge attraction to the Greene County area. During the COVID crisis we've seen the tenants at the park up substantially because the state didn't really close down the parks or anything to that nature. So people needed to get out, people wanted to get out. So where did they go to? They went to the Kaaterskill Park. It's all free so they decided to take up hiking during the COVID crisis.

It has been challenging for us. Knock on wood we haven't had an uptick in emergencies on the trails. We're getting more of law enforcement matters that are on the trails and within the swimming holes and areas like that, minor law enforcement type events, your trespassing, people think they're trespassing on their property, so on and so forth. Parking complaints along the state road. Luckily I haven't had any serious emergencies that I really know of or heard of.

Jeff Harrell: And I'm actually a trail runner and hiker as well, and I've noticed a lot of times people go out to hike and are not prepared. I would think that with COVID, as you mentioned, you've got a lot of people out there hiking that maybe haven't had as much experience and perhaps are unprepared with water and food and those sort of things. You guys run across a lot of that kind of scenario?

Randy Elmerod: Yes we have.

Neil Keliher: All the time.

Randy Elmerod: Yeah. And now that it's September, it's starting to rear its ugly head a little bit more, not for injuries, but lost hikers that weren't prepared. It'll be 75 degrees today, but it started out at 32 here and they'll go into the woods for what they think is a simple hike and darkness sets in a little bit quicker now, they probably don't have the proper clothing, proper footwear, and then they become lost. And that's what we're sending our first responders in, is to go retrieve them and to bring them out. The Forestry Service for the state of New York through DEC has stepped up their game immensely from five years ago.

So they're more of really our first responders that are being engaged in the lost hiker type situation. So we're not tying up the local first responders who are still volunteers that might have to leave their job, so on and so forth, to walk somebody out of the woods because they were lost. The Forestry Service and the Forest Rangers, they know the Kaaterskill Park like the back of their hand. So they're going in. They know probably where they are and they can assist them out, which has been working out really well for us.

The Lost Hiker

Jeff Harrell: So a couple of years ago, you guys had a very specific situation with a lost hiker. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Neil Keliher: In September, 2018, one of our 911 dispatchers Donald Quinland took a 911 call from a group of hikers, had traveled up from the tri-state area, New Jersey, up to the Catskills to go on a hike for the day. The people that called and Donald spoke to, they couldn't say what roads they took or where they were or anything like that because the driver of the car was the guy that was lost on the trail. So if you can imagine five people went in on a trail in the town of Hunter and four people come out. So the four people are looking around saying, "Where's our friend? Where's the guy?" He never comes out. So these four people call 911. They say they come up from New Jersey, they went in on a trail as a group of five, but the group of four came out.

Well, we ask about the car. They could give us a license plate on the car. But the interesting point here was that they had no idea what trail head they walked on. And the guy that knew how they got there was the guy that was lost in the woods. Couldn't tell us what roads they took. We had no way to backtrack where these people actually were. So we relied a lot on the data that came from the cell phone that dialed 911. And it was a phase two, which gave us a relatively good idea of where they could be. But our mapping application on our previous vendor was not up to par. It was not maintained. It wasn't able to take the data that was available today.

We started building out the Tyler Enterprise CAD system in April, May of 2018. And we were scheduled for our end user training the first week of October of 2018. So I had put out the new terminals and I had instructed the staff use this login, sit down, turn it on, play around with it, become familiar with it. Basically try to break it, because then we would know how to fix it. We were still in our building stages. This worked, this didn't work. This is how you fix that. This is how we could do things better. So I had the machines out on the dispatch floor, and Donald who took the call was sitting at one of the stations that had this new terminal there. So he began his interview, quickly figured out that these people had no idea where they were, only that their friend who drove the car, who knew where they were, was the guy that was lost. So we had to rely on the data. And Donald wasn't getting the data in our old system.

So he turned over, turned his chair around and had the Tyler system up and running like I had always asked him to do. And we had all the data turned on. We had all the IP addresses set up so everything came into the system as if it was live. Right when Donald opened up the mapping application, he was able to see right where the call originated from within I think it was 50 to 150 meters. But the interesting part here was that the Tyler mapping application allowed us to create different layers. And one of the layers that I had asked our GIS people to work on was a hiking and trail map layer. And we were able to integrate that into our Tyler map.

Donald turned on the map, the layer there, and he quickly determined, I mean, it was very quick, 30 seconds. He was able to determine what trail head they were parked at and exactly where they were. This saved a tremendous amount of time. If we only had to go with what our previous vendor had, we would've had to extend law enforcement, first responders, any kind of resources that we could pull together to go and look at each of the 15 to 20 different trail heads we had in that particular area within range of this caller and have them look for this particular car and this four group of people standing around a cell phone, talking to the 911 dispatcher, that's what we would've had to have done. And it would've taken resources and time. But with the Tyler technology that we had in place, and Donald being able to work in that mapping application before it even went live, he didn't even have formal training on it before it went live. And he was able to say, "Okay, they're at such and such trail head off of this road. They're going to be standing next to this type of a car with New Jersey plates on it." Boom. You know, it saved a tremendous amount of time.

Jeff Harrell: And so is that what happened? You guys were able to send someone out to that vehicle to help find the hiker?

Neil Keliher: We did. We sent law enforcement, which was already out on the roads looking. We were able to redirect law enforcement to that vehicle. From there, we were able to notify the DEC Forest Rangers with accurate information. And then we were able to get our EMS responders out to that trail head. They walked in, found the guy within an hour, and fortunately enough the gentleman was not injured. He was not dehydrated. He was not compromised in any way. The gentleman actually walked out on his own with the first responders and the Rangers in place. Got into his car with his friends and went home.

Jeff Harrell: Wow. Had you not been able to find him that quickly, would he have probably spent the night out there on the trail somewhere? And I'm trying to understand what would've happened had you not been able to get to him so quickly.

Randy Elmerod: I would say that if we didn't have the mapping software and the mapping client in position for us to use it, that we probably would've located the individual, but it would've been a lot more time consuming and a lot more drawn out than what it was. We came from a system in this situation at hand, if we didn't have the Tyler Enterprise System, then we would've had to revert to paper maps, scrolled out on a desk in the 911 center, trying to find trail heads, trying to find certain markers. These maps were actually given to us by DEC itself, because that's what they had in their stash of trying to help local first responders. So we were fortunate to have maps, but there was an easier way and thankfully with the help of our GIS department and Neil's creative thinking was to put that DEC layer in the map to make our jobs and to make the dispatcher's job a lot easier and less stressful. It's stressful enough being a 911 dispatcher, but if we can try to make their job less stressful and a little bit easier, that's a win for everybody involved.

Jeff Harrell: I'll be back with my conversation with Neil Keliher and Randy Elmerod in just a moment. If you enjoyed this podcast, there is one thing you can do to really help us, and that's to give us a written review. You can go to whatever podcasting platform you use, like Apple Podcast or Spotify, and leave a review there. That will really help us, and we love getting feedback. Well, now back to my conversation with Neil and Randy.

I'd love to know the reaction of the hiker that was lost, he had to have been stressed, worried, and probably really thankful that you guys found him so quickly.

Neil Keliher: I'm sure there was a bit of anxiety. I mean, the man was on a trail that he happened to maybe saw advertised online or on a webpage, somewhere that was an interesting day hike. And he goes up there with his friends and he gets separated from his friends for whatever reason, all of a sudden he can't find his way out. So I'm sure there was anxiety. And then you can imagine he's sitting there on the trail or he's standing in one place. And these first responders and these people come in to help walk him out, I'm sure it was a tremendous relief. And you can only imagine, you said you're a hiker yourself, you can only imagine if you would go into a situation you're not prepared for, now, all of a sudden, your wishing you were prepared and the thoughts that go through your head, you know, what do I do now? I'm sure that when the gentleman saw these people coming at him, it was a tremendous relief.

Jeff Harrell: And I would imagine that's part of what you guys love about what you do, is helping solve these kinds of problems and helping people find the relief that they're looking for.

Neil Keliher: That's what we're all here for. We're here to make sure that everybody goes home at the end of the day, whether it be the people that call 911 or the people that we send because you called 911. That's what we're here for, and we're great to be able to do it, and having the Tyler Technology software and the enterprise CAD system, it helps us night and day beyond where we were two and a half years ago. It's indescribable really. It's a great tool that we have that we've never had before. It's great to have it in place. It's great to have the support in place and know that we can expand on what we have. And we continue to do that every day.

Jeff Harrell: Yeah. Thank you guys so much for what you do. I think it's often overlooked, the first responders and the people that are out there helping, putting their own lives at risk a lot of times to find other people to help save people as well.

Randy Elmerod: We kind of say something in the 911 industry that people that are calling 911, it's their worst day and the worst situation that they're up against. With that mindset for myself, and when we started looking at new CAD systems, that was deep within my soul that I knew that we had to find a CAD system that was easy to work with, could be expanded upon, that it would reduce the amount of stress that the dispatcher has to endure basically throughout their course of their 12 hour shift that they're working. That was my mindset, was that these people or the person calling 911, they're having their worst day. Okay? So therefore, how can we lessen the stress on the dispatcher as well as the caller? And in our previous CAD, the stress level was so high with the caller, but now the dispatcher, because you were all over the place, I'm trying to make a CAD entry. Where with the work that Neil has done, our data entry people, made taking a call a little bit easier than what it was in the past.

And that was a goal that I had when we started looking at CAD systems. And I have to say that today, I feel confident that that occurred. Is that we found a CAD system that will lessen the stress within the 911 industry for Greene County, with both the caller, as well as the dispatcher. I'm very thankful for the system. Very happy to see a system that came in that was user friendly. Because we came from an old system that was not very user friendly.

Jeff Harrell: That's great. And I'd love to give you just an opportunity here at the end to add anything that maybe we haven't touched on or talked about. Neil, we'll start with you. Is there anything that you'd like to add?

Neil Keliher: A couple of things I'd like to add. Having good technology, having the right people in place, all working together from several different departments makes handling incidents like this more manageable and less stressful on the dispatchers and first responders. We're very thankful here, not only for the Tyler Technologies and being able to work with them now, but it takes a group of people here within the county to be where we are.

Without network infrastructure, there's a whole foundation here that's built before Tyler Technologies could even come into the county. We had to have good network infrastructure. We needed to have a solid network with backups and support, the whole thing. That's the foundation, okay? Then we have our GIS department who was able to put together a tremendous MXD files and all kinds of things in the GIS world that we were able to put into the Tyler system, the folks at Tyler working together to make sure that the result was what we were after.

Having those two things is imperative. Having a good working relationship with your GIS department so you can pick them up on the phone and say, "Hey, I need this address entered, or we need this road entered, or this needs to be changed. Can we create this layer?" Being able to get them on the phone and actually say, "Hey, we need this," and then drop in what they're doing and doing what we need to do for them. It speaks volumes. They have so many other responsibilities, they have tax responsibilities, they have properties. They have all the things that those people do in the real property tax world. For them to drop what they're doing and pick up what we may call and say, "Hey, we need this done," within an hour it's done. That's a tremendous support.

With our network, we find an issue here, they drop what they're doing and they come over and they help us. And that's tremendous support. Without those two things we would be nothing here, and without the support of our county legislature and all the departments here, we wouldn't be where we are, simply put. It takes a team, a good group of people to keep this running and Greene County is very fortunate to have those people in place and to continue to support the 911 department. Jeff Harrell: That's great. That's perfect. Neil, thank you so much. And Randy, is there anything you'd like to add?

Randy Elmerod: It's a breath of fresh air for us to have a CAD system that works. And it works during the busiest times to even non busy times. Again, with the people that are in place, either in county departments or out of county departments, other counties that have assisted us, I'll give a shout out to our neighboring county, which is Ulster County, that uses the same CAD system, their people that are in place help Neil build our CAD system here in Greene County, because we want to get the most bang for our buck in this CAD system. I'm very, very happy and very pleased with our purchase here of Tyler. I believe we'll be here for a long time as a user.

Jeff Harrell: Well guys, thank you so much. Thanks for all that you do to help people to solve problems. We really, really appreciate it and appreciate your time.

Randy Elmerod: Thank you very much.

Neil Keliher: Thank you.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I do admire those who prioritize helping others, and I loved how Neil said that they are here to make sure that everybody goes home at the end of the day. That's such a great perspective. Well, that concludes our episode. Thanks so much for joining me. We've got many more episodes planned. Until then, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.