Coeur d’Alene, ID: On September 18th at around 7:00 pm, information was received from the Central Dispatch Center of an incident involving the fire suppression system. It was reported the Dry-Chem fire suppression system activated, causing the center to evacuate. It is unknown what caused the system to activate as there were no reports of any fires and fire personnel could not locate any fire in the building. Some of the Dispatchers complained of some breathing difficulties and were checked out by medical personnel at the scene.
Services to the community were not interrupted and the 911 system remained working. The Central Dispatch Center has a procedure in place in case of an incident happening at the Center. All 911 calls were transferred to Post Falls Police Department, and Dispatchers were able to dispatch First Responders from the Post Falls Police Department.
At around 8:15 pm, the center was cleared by fire personnel and Dispatchers were allowed back into the building and began resuming normal operations.
The Central Dispatch Center is the communication hub for the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, the CDA Police Department, all the County Fire Departments, CDA Tribal Police, Spirit Lake Police, Hayden Lake Police Department and some of the local federal agencies.
Sheriff Ben Wolfinger
By: Lt. Ryan Higgins