Bladen County eSMS

Welcome to the Bladen County ESMS web site. From here, officers are able to register and sign up for the ability to:

What is ESMS?

ESMS stands for Emergency Short Message Service. This is a free service provided for Bladen County emergency responders in a joint effort between the Bladen County Sheriff's Office and the Tar Heel Fire Department. The system delivers text messages to your cell phone from the CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) System from inside Bladen Central Communications. If you have text messaging available on your phone, you should be able to receive these messages.

How does ESMS work? 

When Bladen Central receives a 911 call, the dispatcher begins entering information about the call on the CAD System. When the dispatcher has enough information, the CAD will automatically start the process to send the necessary paging tones over the radio system and the dispatcher will announce the call. At about the same time the tones are being broadcast, the CAD creates a message and delivers it to a Text Message Server that resides in Central. This Server sends text messages to the emergency responders’ cellular phones by means of the internet.

This is a how your message may appear on your phone.
From: sta57@bcesms.com
ESMS:ST57;MOTOR VEHICLE CRASH W/INJURY;123 MAIN ST/NC HWY131;THL; MAP http://...

ST57 - Station number
123 Main St - Address of the incident
Following the address is a backslash ( / ) and NC HWY 131 which is the nearest cross street.
THL indicates it is in the Tar Heel area.
MAP - Follwing this is a URL (if enough information was provided) that will load a Google Map of the address in the message.  This is mostly a smartphone ability, and some phones will even allow you to start Navigation to that address.

ESMS was made available to:

Ø  Supplement your radio or pager.  For example, you can SEE the address of the call as opposed to have to ask Central to “Repeat the numeric’s, please”.  (Obviously, you should not attempt to do this while driving.)

Ø  As a backup means of dispatching emergency responders.  In the event of a major failure at Central, ESMS provides a way to get a message delivered to you.

How do I sign up?

 For each Fire Department and/or Rescue Squad that you are a member of, the Chief (or designated officer) will have to be notified.  They will get in contact with us.