Supervisors Order Inquiry Into New Fire Dispatch System

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday instructed the county fire chief to investigate allegations of errors in a new computerized fire dispatch system, raised in a Times story last week.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who requested the investigation by the county forester and fire warden, attributed it to new dispatchers’ unfamiliarity with the far-flung areas of the county, such as the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys.

“They need to ensure that the people receiving those calls know the area . . . because time is of the essence,” he said.

In his motion, which passed unanimously, Antonovich asked that the county fire officials “develop a plan to ensure accuracy” in the future.

Although the number of incorrect dispatches is estimated to be small, critics contend that even one error can be life-threatening.

In The Times story, firefighters and other critics of the $27-million system, which went into use in February, said rescuers were sometimes sent to the wrong addresses, the wrong streets and even the wrong cities among the 50 communities served by the county Fire Department.

Glitches have included an attempt to dispatch a fireboat to landlocked Westlake Village and an incorrect street spelling that sent rescue units to a small Antelope Valley community instead of to a doctor’s office in Lancaster, where a woman was suffering seizures. The woman survived.

Fire officials have acknowledged that there are problems with the new system, but they said that most of the problems have been eliminated and that the new system has already cut the average emergency response time by two minutes. Until February, the county relied on a computer system installed in the mid-1970s.