Ms. Juliette Gooding, the face of the country’s 911 emergency programme, will be saying bon voyage to the people of the TCI and a country she has come to regard as home for the past three years.
Ms. Juliette Gooding stepped down as programme manager July 31, having devoted the past three years to ensuring a well functioning 911 system is in place.
The Barbadian expert in 911 systems, coming off assignment in the Cayman Islands, had her work cut out for her in a country that had few street names, fewer street signs and numbers, and not much of a communications
system.
With sparse government funding, the fledgling system benefitted in a big way from community support, especially from businesses that donated enough money to help finally bring the system online in February 2010.
Now the fully staffed 911 Call Center on Providenciales handles as many as 13,000 calls each month on its communications system.
“I’m really quite pleased about that. We can share information with fire, police and ambulance at the same time, so that is working very well,” Ms. Gooding is quoted as saying.
Work is still in progress on the programme on Grand Turk, where the communication system is not complete, but she said street naming and numbering is getting close.
“In another couple of months, you should see the residents having their numbers and street signage,” Gooding said.
“Even though Provo has essentially been complete as far as having street names and a numbers, you don’t see all the signs we would like to see up,” Gooding said. Completing that task will take community support
and government enforcement.
Businesses and residences that fail to properly display their official addresses can face fines. To get your official house number and learn more about 911, visit www.911tci.com or call 946-5255.
Now that her job in the TCI is completed, Ms. Gooding plans to return to Cayman and relax for awhile before moving on to her next assignment.
Ms. Gooding is expected to be in the islands until the 10th of August.
