The Monmouth County (N.J.) Sheriff’s Office used Spillman’s CAD and mapping software to efficiently respond to a record-breaking number of emergency calls during Superstorm Sandy.
New Jersey’s densely populated Monmouth County was one of the hardest hit areas, suffering the most damage of any community affected by the storm. About 72,000 residents evacuated the low-lying coastline as a 13.5-foot storm surge inundated the area with water, sand and debris.
During the storm, the Monmouth County Sheriff’s Office received more than 7,700 calls for service, including more than 1,200 reports of downed wires and power poles, 2,300 calls for emergency medical services, 250 calls for rescue, 2,000 fire requests and 6,000 police requests.
Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said the Spillman system, implemented just six weeks before the storm hit, aided personnel in responding to the crisis and functioned seamlessly despite the unprecedented system demand. The software project brought the communications department and more than 20 other municipalities onto one multijurisdictional system.
One of the biggest problems the agency faced was the 94 calls for water rescues, which are dangerous and require specially trained dive team members. Monmouth personnel could see in real time where water rescues were needed, as well as the location and status of every responding unit in the field. This allowed the office to visually determine where water rescue calls were clustered so that the safest and most efficient rescues could be planned.
“Spillman allowed us to really get a good picture through the CAD map and the AVL, which we didn’t have previously.” Golden said. “It helped management get a feel for all the calls coming in.”
Golden said that during the storm, the agency experienced no downtime from the system, which had been built with a redundant server for backup in times of crisis. Golden added that even though the system was working, Spillman representatives called throughout the night to ensure that the software remained functional during the natural disaster.