On Memorial Day 2019, we had some severe
weather that was approaching our area.
The tornado actually hit our area and it
traveled through Beavercreek before it
lifted off the ground and went away at
that point. It affected about fourteen
and a half square miles of Beavercreek,
and over 12,000 properties within Beavercreek,
so it had a pretty major impact for
our community. So, that evening we spent
most of our time assessing the damage
and going basically door-to-door to make
sure that everybody was safe and accounted
for in the entire Beavercreek community.
The data exchange really
started from the coordination efforts at
the Emergency Operations Center, knowing
which crews were in which map area, so we
were able to send specific map sections
out to specific crews to help keep
accountability and make sure that we
knew where crews were working so that we
could track them and make sure they were
safe the entire time. That evolved into
the damage assessment piece where we
were able to actually take a data
collector application and put it out in
the field and partner with FirstNet to
be able to add some mobile hotspots to
our existing cache of resources so we
were able to quickly collect the actual
damage assessments in those areas and
were able to supply that to FEMA.
Our decision to move to FirstNet for our
data communications was based on some
practical tests that we had partnered
with the state of Ohio to do and were
able to see the benefit of a dedicated
public safety data network to help when
we just can't have normal data access.
When we're competing 
against consumers for that data,
we can't wait the extra second for that
information to get to our crews or get
to the hospital because 
those seconds actually count.
