Police, Fire Departments Urged to Cooperate on 911 Overhaul

Underscoring problems in the city’s ability to respond to rescue calls, a private consultant is recommending steps to improve coordination of incompatible police and fire emergency communications systems.

The city should hire an emergency-systems coordinator, ensure that the Los Angeles police and fire departments work together to enhance 911 emergency communication and select new dispatch sites that can accommodate both departments in the same locations, according to a report to be released today by the consultant, the DAMAS Group.

“There has been very little, if any, combined long-range planning for ongoing operations” and for improving communication between the police and fire departments, the consultant found during an analysis commissioned by the city’s recently formed Information Technology Agency.

The two departments have been working on separate programs to improve their troubled, frequently overwhelmed 911 systems. The consultant said several steps should be taken now to ensure compatibility down the line.

The Fire Department should assign staff to participate in the planning of the LAPD’s new 911 system, to be designed by TRW Systems, the consultant recommended. The police system is to be completed by the turn of the century. The Fire Department is working on interim improvements to its emergency communications system, which officials estimate will need a major overhaul within four or five years.

The lack of coordination between the two departments was highlighted in a fatal house fire in January 1995, when firefighters were sent to the wrong address, delaying their arrival until 14 minutes after the first call to the city’s 911 system. Part of the problem was blamed on miscommunication between the 911 operator and the Fire Department dispatcher to whom the call was relayed.

Caprice Young, technology coordinator for Mayor Richard Riordan, said the report was commissioned after the mayor’s volunteer task force of technology experts noted the lack of compatible communications systems within the two emergency departments. A few months after the task force delivered its report on city technological needs in January 1995, the two departments’ policy-setting commissions met to seek solutions, Young said.

One of the recommendations--to find new dispatch center sites acceptable to both departments--could become controversial. The Police Department is planning to build new centers in the west San Fernando Valley and Westchester to replace the outgrown quarters beneath City Hall East. Those offices house fire and police dispatch operations as well as the Emergency Operations Center, which is activated for major disasters.

But the Fire Department wants at least one of the two new centers to be built in the Civic Center, Young said. A possible alternative to the site in Westchester, adjacent to the new police recruit training center, is city-owned land at 1st and San Pedro streets, now the site of a city parking structure.

The consultant said having police and fire dispatch operations on the same site would be preferable to separate locations, but noted that technological improvements would allow the two departments to communicate in most cases even if separate sites were chosen.

The consultant also recommended that the Fire Department develop a new radio communications master plan and set priorities for paying for and building dispatch facilities, a new telephone system and other features compatible with the LAPD system.