Improved Emergency Phone System Sought

Los Angeles police and fire officials, looking at ways to improve the efficiency of the 911 emergency system, have formed a task force to determine why calls routed to fire dispatchers are routinely delayed for 18 to 21 seconds.

Initial studies indicate that the delay may result from the way calls in the system are processed and that at least five seconds could be saved by redesigning the telephone network, officials said.

Fire officials said the delays have not resulted in any serious incidents or hampered firefighters in responding to fires.

“This is an effort to improve the largest, most sophisticated 911 system in the world. We’re just trying to make it better,” Deputy Fire Chief Dell Howard said.

Under the emergency system, which began in 1984 after much delay, 911 calls are initially picked up by police personnel, who screen the call and transfer it to an appropriate agency.

For example, by pushing a button, calls are automatically transferred to fire dispatchers. Fire dispatchers are experiencing 18- to 21-second delays in receiving calls that should only take a few seconds, Howard said.

However, officials with Pacific Bell, which owns the emergency network equipment, say their studies do not indicate shortcomings in the system.

Larry Kuhn, manager of Pacific Bell’s 911 services, said reviews of the system indicate delays of only three or four seconds when a call is transferred from police personnel to fire dispatchers.

Kuhn said test calls made in response to concerns of fire officials show that it takes an average of 18 to 21 seconds from the time the 911 call is registered on PacBell equipment until the call is answered by fire dispatchers.

“I think that in the interests of public safety, fire officials are concerned with reducing the amount of time it takes to respond to a call and rightly so,” Kuhn said. “But we can find nothing in the system that would be causing delays. I think the more people who are waiting to pick up a call, the faster that call will be taken. It may take time to answer the calls because of their numbers.”

Howard said the Fire Department’s initial studies show that the problem does not appear to be related to the response time of police and fire personnel.

Police officials say their personnel answer most 911 calls within two seconds and are meeting department goals of answering all calls within 10 seconds. However, police officials agree that the system can be improved.

“There’s no doubt that the system is overtaxed and is not large enough for the volume of calls and the work we are asked to do,” said Lt. David Musil, a watch commander in the police communications division.

The problems are exacerbated by crank and non-emergency calls, Musil said.

More than 5,000 calls to 911 are made each day, but a March audit showed that 58% of all police-related calls turn out to be non-emergencies.

Because most calls to the Fire Department are genuine emergencies, fire officials have lobbied for legislation that would allow fire departments to use a separate emergency system--by dialing 911F, for example.

“We think it might be an advantage because the calls would come directly to our dispatchers, automatically eliminating the 15 to 20 seconds it takes to transfer a call,” Howard said.