Stung by a recent series of deadly delays in response times to 911 calls, the NYPD and the FDNY announced a modification to the way it is implimenting its vaunted new 911 system to report fire emergencies.
The new Unified Call Taking system, which began in May, was designed to allow callers reporting fire emergencies to speak only to NYPD 911 operators, thereby eliminating the need for the operator to transfer callers to a fire dispatcher.
Under the new system, the 911 operator takes down the caller’s information and transmits the data electronically to the fire dispatcher who then assigns whatever resources may be needed.
City officials insist that response times have been cut — from an average of three minutes and 56 seconds last month, compared to four minutes and 10 seconds in April, a month before the new system launched.
But the Unified Call Taking system has come under withering criticism amid several deadly delays of late, leading the NYPD and FDNY to announce a fine-tuning of the process that is designed to allow an FDNY official to listen in on the emergency fire calls and ask additional questions.
The new change “should not increase response time but will help train Police Call Takers as they take on this relatively new and important responsibility,” the release stated.
“Under a modified procedure intended to reduce the likelihood of inaccurate information being sent, the Police Call Taker will now conference in a Fire Department Call Taker who will listen to the call, have the opporunity to ask additional questions of the caller if necessary and verify the accuracy of the information which the Police Call Taker transmits to the Fire dispatchers,” a NYPD press release noted.
David Rosenzweig, president of the Uniformed Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association, whose 200 members will now be consulted as part of the change.
“It’s taken a long time for them to realize how necessary and important fire emergency communication professionals are in answering fire calls which are quite different and unique than police emergency calls,” Rosenzweig said.
He said the decision to use the new system was slow in coming because city officials “don’t want to admit they were wrong,” in admitting a need to fine-tune the Unified Call Taking system.
Rosenzweig said he was not yet prepared to declare victory, noting that the recent controversies concerned 911 response times would likely continue for the time being.
Bloomberg administration officials “would like [them] to go away, but [they] won’t go away until they go back to the old system.”