How does 9-1-1 really work? 

That is a great question.  The 9-1-1 Public Safety Answering Points are responsible for specific jurisdictional areas. In most cases, they are not interconnected so if you call 9-1-1 in Ashland, KY to report a problem in another county, state, or country it will not work. We will do our best to try to get you in contact with the right agency, but it will delay the response.

In Kentucky, the state has begun work on a statewide Ip telephone network that will allow for transfer of calls to other jurisdictions, but it is still very much in its infancy stage. Over the next few years, the network will grow and become more robust.

Currently, Boyd County 9-1-1, is  a member of the Central KY 9-1-1 Network. We are connected with 12 other counties. The closes to us is Greenup County 9-1-1 which allows for automatic rollover of telephone traffic in the event of an equipment failure or catastrophic incident. The two centers serve as backup call taking operations for each other so that no 9-1-1 call should go unanswered. During the Derecho storm, June of 2012, the system worked as designed. The two centers answered 1800 phone calls in 4 hours period, communicating back and forth to get assistance where it was needed.