911: New Emergency System Ready to Go in Hermosa Beach

After a series of failures, Hermosa Beach’s 911 telephone equipment has been replaced and officials expect residents will experience no further problems when they dial the emergency number.

Nevertheless, Public Safety Director Steve Wisniewski conceded that some fingers may be crossed at City Hall until the new system proves its reliability.

“We’re confident that the problems have been fixed, but time will tell,” he said Thursday. During outages in the system in recent weeks, he said, residents were able to report emergencies by dialing the Police or Fire departments when they could not get through on 911.

No Problems

Wisniewski said he knows of no complaints nor problems caused by delays in reporting emergencies.

Hermosa Beach began operating its own 911 number in late December, after dropping out of the South Bay Regional Public Authority, which had handled emergency calls from city residents. The city made the switch in hopes of reducing its costs for emergency dispatch services.

Hermosa Beach’s own 911 system crashed for about four hours on Jan. 13, then again on Jan. 17, and for the last time, officials hope, on Wednesday.

In one case, General Telephone, which provided the equipment, attributed the failure to external circuit problems. In the others, internal devices in the 911 equipment malfunctioned.

Wisniewski said the phone company had installed used equipment initially but replaced it with a new system after the third failure on Wednesday. Hermosa Beach has its own back-up electrical power, a generator and batteries that automatically kick in whenever there is a failure in line power, he said.

‘No Lack of Power’

“Lack of power wasn’t the problem,” he said. “Power was still running into the 911 box when the voltage converter or other devices inside the box failed.”

General Telephone officials said the company provides 911 systems for 90 police departments and rarely has technical failures.

When Hermosa Beach decided in late 1987 to exclude itself from the regional communications center and return to a city-operated dispatch system, officials projected a savings of from $307,000 to $621,000 over a seven-year period, Wisniewski said. The amount of savings, he said, will depend on how much the center increases its charges to member cities between now and 1995.

Those costs, he said, have escalated sharply in recent years, rising from $82,458 in the fiscal year 1979-80 to a projected $264,891 this year, if the city had stayed in the regional network.

In addition to acquiring its own 911 equipment, which costs about $25,000, the city hired five dispatchers, remodeled quarters for them and bought computer and radio equipment, he said.

The state pays the monthly telephone charges for the 911 number, which leaves the city with annual costs of $145,000 for the dispatchers and $115,000 for the computer and radio equipment, Wisniewski said.

Most of the city’s savings over what it would have cost if it had remained in the regional network would occur after Hermosa Beach pays off its equipment costs in five years, he said.

Robert J. Benson, executive director of the regional communications center, said that what Hermosa Beach paid toward the cost of operating the center will be divided among the remaining member cities: Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Hawthorne and Gardena. He said he expects no substantial increase in the center’s new budget.

Benson said assessments for an equipment replacement fund accounted for the increases in fees to members in recent years.

Despite losing the participation of Hermosa Beach, Benson said, “The prospects for the center are very bright. We provide a level of services and efficiency that cannot be duplicated by individual cities.”

For example, he said, a single dispatcher in a police department may be overwhelmed by calls in a major emergency, while the center has enough staff to handle emergencies along with calls from other member cities. High-speed chases through several cities also can be better coordinated at the center, he said.

The regional center began operations in 1975 with seven member cities. Palos Verdes Estates dropped out in 1981 and Redondo Beach left the network two years later.