"Nick was in the dispatch center and heard the entire ordeal play out over the scanners, " Sienkiewicz said.

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Firefighters were able to use their radios to let the dispatch center know what was going on and that's how negotiators communicated with Brown initially, Walters said.

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He also had a police scanner and told CBS the inspiration for Twitter came from listening to the short bursts of chatter from the city's emergency dispatch center.

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Making sure every 911 dispatch center and every fire and police station in the country is ready for Y2K is too large of a task for any one agency.

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So, the PJM Dispatch center schedules the cheapest first.

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His 19-year-old son, Nick Chiapperini, was on the job in the Monroe Ambulance Company dispatch center when the call for help came in, according to West Webster Fire Department spokesman Al Sienkiewicz.

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When a 9-1-1 call is received reporting someone unconscious, unresponsive and likely needing CPR, the local communications center will dispatch public safety resources as they do today, but software running in the center will also send this alert to nearby citizen rescuers.

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The center must dispatch ships to service the buoys, whose mooring lines often get tangled in fishing lines or are severed by collisions with boats.

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