Hold the Line

[July 4th, 2007]

When Dianne Pierce's car burst into flames from an electrical fire in June 2006 outside her Northeast Portland home, she called 911.

Instead of an operator, she got a recording telling her to stay on the line. When a dispatcher finally picked up seven minutes and 43 seconds later, the inside of her Kia Sedona had melted.

"I was hysterical," recalls Pierce, who was home alone with her three kids. "I'm watching my only mode of transportation go up in flames."

Heading into July 4—one of 911's busiest days thanks to fireworks—WW has learned that since April 2006, at least 15,866 emergency calls in Multnomah County were put on hold for longer than one minute.

That's only 3.1 percent of the 510,527 total 911 calls the city-run dispatch center handled over that time period. But Brian Dale, chairman of the call-processing board at the Arlington, Va.-based National Emergency Number Association, says it's "certainly outside the norm." There is no nationwide data available, but Dale says all calls where he works in Salt Lake City are answered in three rings or transferred to another dispatch center.

The Southeast Portland call center, which dispatches all police, fire and medical calls in Multnomah County, came under scrutiny last month when an off-duty Gresham firefighter spent one minute and 44 seconds on hold trying to report a fatal house fire.

City Commissioner Randy Leonard, an ex-firefighter who oversees the call center, ordered an overhaul after he learned operators were working a non-emergency line during Rutledge's call. In addition to 911 calls, the center handles non-emergency calls—about a third of its phone traffic.

Leonard's directive was clear: no more 911 calls on hold. To meet that goal, however, the center will have to cut short non-emergency calls from the public, says Lisa Turley, director of the city's Bureau of Emergency Communications. Instead, she says, people may be told to call other agencies, like animal control and social services.

But WW's analysis of 911 calls shows Leonard's order is a tall one. Dianne Pierce, for example, was one of six callers since last April who waited longer than seven minutes after dialing 911. The longest, 11 minutes and 29 seconds, came from a Taco Express on North Lombard Street. The caller hung up before an operator answered.

Bill Collins, the county's head of emergency medical services, says he doesn't know of any cases where a call delay has proved harmful in an emergency.

Managers say the call center answers 90 percent of calls within 20 seconds. But further complicating Leonard's order is the fact that many of BOEC's records on call delays contain faulty data because of a computer glitch. The glitch surfaced after WW pointed out errors in records BOEC provided. That revealed Leonard's office has been receiving faulty data for more than a year in performance reports, Turley says.

Leonard was on vacation Monday, but his chief of staff, Ty Kovatch, says, "Naturally we'd be concerned if there's a glitch."

To cut down hold times, Leonard wants the center to reverse its practice of completing each call before moving on to the next, even if a 911 caller is waiting.

Turley says operators will have to hang up quicker on non-emergency calls. And this week, they won't be taking fireworks complaints unless there's an emergency. "This is not going to sound good," she says, "but we're providing way too much service to individual callers."