Mason County Sheriff's Office:  Telecommunications
The Mason County Sheriff’s Office provides 24 hour emergency 911 service to all residents of Mason County.  The dispatch center, located within the Sheriff’s Office building, also handles all non-emergency calls for police, fire, ambulance, ESDA, and search and rescue services.  There are 11 full time telecommunication employees who work together to provide 24-hour service, and who are all certified
emergency medical dispatchers.  As
emergency medical dispatchers, they are able
to gather and provide important patient
information while emergency services are on
their way to the scene. 

The dispatch center is equipped with a
telecommunications device for the Deaf (T.D.D.).
This device detects incoming tones from other
T.D.D. phones and allows hearing impaired persons to communicate with 911 call takers through a keyboard device.  The Mason County Sheriff’s Office has technology that automatically interfaces a T.D.D. call directly to the call taker’s keyboard. 

In the event of threatening weather, the professionals at the dispatch center have access to a satellite weather service where they are able to monitor storms and track their location and severity.  The satellite weather service, coupled with information received from the National Weather Service, help dispatchers determine when and where to send trained weather spotters throughout Mason County.  As the weather spotters radio in to the dispatch center to report information such as wind speed, hail size, or the location of possible tornado activity, the dispatchers relay the information to the National Weather Service in Lincoln, IL.  That information is then relayed to media outlets for severe weather alerts.