Upgrade of Fire Dispatch System Is 3 Years Late : Report: The department’s obsolete computers are subject to crashes, but problems keep pushing back a replacement date.

An overdue $57-million project to upgrade the Los Angeles Fire Department’s dispatch computers is mired in “significant contract and technical design” problems and is nowhere near completion, forcing the city to rely on an outdated system, a private report has concluded.

The state-of-the-art project--which was supposed to be completed three years ago--could take an additional two years to finish, according to the study ordered by the City Council. In the meantime, the report concluded, the Fire Department is stuck with an antiquated, “very unreliable” emergency dispatch system that crashed 46 times during a 12-month period--more than the total of nine other dispatch systems in large cities studied around the country.

When the system crashes, fire units that are normally automatically dispatched by computer have to be manually routed to emergencies, wasting valuable time. During total system failures, which occurred on 14 occasions in the period studied, dispatchers have to scramble to large map boards of the city and look at colored pins showing where available units are located. Then they have to call the units by radio or telephone.

The study, however, found no evidence that lives have been lost or endangered as a result of such breakdowns. Assistant Fire Chief Tom Curry acknowledged that emergency response is “not going to be as fast” during such breakdowns but insisted that the effect on the public is negligible. “The impact on the public is usually transparent,” he said.

Nonetheless, the findings by Carroll Buracker & Associates Inc., a public safety consulting firm, raise serious questions about the ambitious computer project, which was approved by city voters in a 1988 bond measure spurred onto the ballot by public concern after a fatal blaze at the First Interstate tower Downtown.

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The study also suggests that the city will have no choice but to continue using a dispatch system described as one of the worst in the nation, because of the continuing delays with the new system.

“From our experience, [Los Angeles] has more problems than other cities” with its dispatch systems, study author Carroll Buracker said in an interview Wednesday.

Curry, commander of the dispatch center, said Wednesday that he agreed with the report’s assessment of the current dispatch system.

“You think, my God, is it really that terrible? And it is,” Curry said. “We should have shoved the current system out the door 10 years ago.”

Officials said that, in general, the current system is simply old and overloaded with the increasing number of emergency calls over the past decade.

The planned replacement system has been plagued by repeated software failures and requests by fire officials for additional programs that set the contractor back, officials said.

In assessing the department’s overall communications system, the private report also recommended against a proposal by Mayor Richard Riordan to switch to civilian employees at the dispatch center. Such a move, the report found, would not be as cost-effective as the mayor had envisioned.

Replacing the 60 firefighter dispatchers with civilians was proposed by the mayor as a way of reducing operating costs in the budget-strapped department. The move was strongly opposed by department officials and the 3,000-member firefighters union.

In making his proposal, Riordan relied on a previous study that failed to take into account a number of relevant factors, the report said. Among them is that 20 of the current dispatchers are permanently disabled and would have to be pensioned out by the city at a cost of nearly $500,000 a year if their jobs were turned over to civilians.

The current dispatchers, the report found, “are among the best, if not the best, in the United States.” Removing them could result in a “potential degradation in emergency service” for the city, the report said.

A dispatcher was recently honored by the City Council for giving emergency phone instructions that saved a 2-year-old’s life, said Capt. Ken Buzzell, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City.

“The question I have for the mayor,” Buzzell asked Wednesday, “is how much is that kid’s life worth?”

Christopher O’Donnell, Riordan’s budget director, said Wednesday that the mayor’s office is “flexible and open” on the subject of a changeover to civilian staff. He said the mayor will look to the Fire Department to help it evaluate the study’s recommendations and find other ways to improve efficiency.

“We do not want any adverse impacts on public safety, and we are very open to other options,” O’Donnell said. “What is important is that the Fire Department go through and independently see what changes can be made to improve efficiency. It is very important to have efficiency improvements if we are to maintain, and hopefully to improve, the level of service in a time of declining revenues.”

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O’Donnell said “there has been a 180-degree change in the Fire Department’s attitude” in the past year. “Now we can work together and have a dialogue about how we’re going to make changes rather than always having it come from the top,” O’Donnell said.

Riordan’s staff took a lot of heat from department brass and the firefighters union over proposed budget cuts last spring.

Regarding the troubled computer project, O’Donnell said the report revealed little that the mayor’s office does not know and is trying to fix.

“We’re very concerned, and we’ve been working to clean things up,” he said.

Compounding the situation is that city officials are currently locked in a dispute with the project’s primary contractor and may have to resort to litigation to resolve the matter, fire officials said. The firm, Systemhouse Inc., is requesting additional money for what it contends are extra software programs requested by the Fire Department, fire officials said. Riordan said earlier this year that the firm was requesting an additional $10 million.

Systemhouse spokesman Rick Gray declined to comment Wednesday on the private report or the specifics of the contract discussions.

A court battle would push back the project’s start-up date or even threaten it all together. Assistant Chief Curry on Wednesday declined to discuss when the project would be finished, citing the possibility of litigation.

The report noted that “thousands” of 911 calls go unanswered and recommended that the city investigate why. Of the approximately 900,000 emergency calls received by the Fire Department each year, Curry said, between 3,000 and 4,000 go unanswered.

Curry blamed the problem primarily on a “spike of activity” that occurs when dispatchers receive multiple calls for the same emergency, such as smoke on a mountaintop. But he said the public has not suffered as a result. “We’re not aware of an impact or any sort of a denigration of service that has occurred,” he said.