Marshall County 911 adding towers for better coverage

MARSHALL COUNTY, AL (WAFF) - Marshall County is in the process of installing new 911 towers which will help keep you and your family safe.

Communication is key to saving lives and officials hope to increase coverage from approximately seventy percent to more than ninety-five percent.

Communication for area fire, volunteer fire, and ambulances in Marshall County is getting much better.

The 911 board currently operates 4 towers across the county.

But an engineers study concluded they needed three more to saturate the area.

Two have been built with one more on the way.

Guntersville Police Jim Peterson says an ultimate goal for the towers would be for all public agencies in the county to get P-25 compliant radios which would allow agencies to communicate with one another.

“You can quickly join all those agencies together and you can actually talk with someone from another jurisdiction, even another discipline, fire service, police, public works, things of that nature. We certainly cannot do that now and we’re resigned to try to make cell phone calls in a lot of situations and as anyone could understand that would be functional or feasible in an emergency situation,” said Guntersville Police Chief Jim Peterson.

Chief Peterson anticipates the final tower will be up and ready sometime this fall.

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