Text to 911 is live in Stark County. Here's what to know.

• Stark County residents can now text 911.
• Text messages to 911 will be handled the same way as phone calls.

Stark County residents can now text 911.

Tim Warstler, director of the Stark County Emergency Management Agency (EMA), told Stark County commissioners during a work session Monday that residents are now able to send messages to 911 using any device capable of texting. Final testing occurred in January and February as Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, the three wireless networks using towers in Stark County, went live with the service.

"This one step is another step in making Stark County a safer community," Sheriff George Maier said during the work session.

Here are a few things to know about Stark County's new text-to-911 service:

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What can you expect when you text 911?

Texts to 911 will be treated the same as phone calls.

Anyone who texts 911 can expect an immediate reply from a dispatcher confirming they received the message. If you do not get a response, that means the message was not received, Warstler said.

911 Coordinator Julia Patterson said the texts come with longitude and latitude to help officials determine where the messages are coming from, and they are working with software company Carbyne to convert the information to addresses.

Those who text 911 will also receive a message at the end of the conversation, letting them know they are no longer connected to 911.

How will this service be useful to law enforcement?

Maier said the text-to-911 service will be helpful in dangerous situations where individuals are unable to say anything.

One example he gave was of a Stark County woman who was abducted at gunpoint by her estranged husband and locked inside her bedroom. The woman was unable to speak to a dispatcher, but she managed to call 911, enabling law enforcement to use Carbyne software to access the camera on her phone and figure out what was going on.

Maier said officers were able to help the woman, but the situation may have benefited from text-to-911 because it would have given the woman the option to relay information to a dispatcher.

Where do 911 texts go in Stark County?

All texts go to the Stark County Sheriff's Office. County officials learned in July 2022 that would be the only way for the county to receive 911 texts without having to complete a major overall to the system at all dispatch centers.

Warstler said the calls can be transferred out to other centers once they are received.

When did the text-to-911 project get started?

Discussions regarding texts to 911 started in 2018. Employees with Stark EMA and the Sheriff's Office visited other counties that already had the service in place to observe their systems, but learned that many of them were separate from the 911 call system.

"What I mean by that is somebody could text 911 but it might only go to one computer in the room. ... It wasn't integrated into the actual call handling so it got the same priority as if you had dialed 911," Warstler said.

Stark learned it would need to finish upgrading its 911 system before it could operate a text-to-911 service that was integrated with the call system. The county upgraded to a program called VESTA provided by AT&T in December 2021. The $826,192 upgrade was paid for through a $355,215 federal grant, and the remaining costs came from Stark's 911 wireless fund. Warstler said AT&T informed county officials in January 2022 its system would require additional updates before it could receive and process texts.

Warstler told the commissioners they expected the project to be a "easy lift" when they finished upgrading to the VESTA system at the end of 2021, and were surprised to learn that AT&T's equipment was not ready for it in the area.

Do other counties in the area have text-to-911?

Warstler said Summit, Trumbull and Mahoning counties do not have text-to-911, but noted that Stark County's work with AT&T should make the process easier for these counties to move forward with the service in the future.

Columbiana County already has the service, he said, but uses a different phone system.

Reach Paige at 330-580-8577, pmbennett@gannett.com or on Twitter @paigembenn.