The reporting of the recent mass shootings reminded me of a question I’ve had for a long time.
“Your call is important to us” may be the most commonly heard phrase in modern life, used and repeated ad nauseam when you are being put on hold.
I’ve heard stories about people calling 911 and being put on hold, but those are usually about bad operators or bad systems.
After a mass shooting in a public place - or any number of other disasters - dozens, maybe hundreds, of people will call 911 almost simultaneously, far more than the number of operators available.
What happens then? The operators can’t know which calls to prioritize, can’t let calls go unanswered, can’t put people on hold, can’t even say automatically “we’ve responded to the shooting” and let the call die because more information might be provided.
I’m sure the answer may differ depending on the call site, its location and its size, but what would be the standard procedures in such cases?
Do callers get a recorded message? Do the operators break into other calls to ask them if they can hold? How many people stay on the line? Are the numbers recorded so they can be followed up if the end the call?
I called 911 in Baltimore city once (to try to report possible gunshots in a park - likely actually kids with illegal fireworks). My call was not answered before I got sick of waiting and hung up.
When 10 people call a business that only has 2 operators, the first two get answered and the next 8 go on hold until an operator frees up. Pretty much the same things happen on 911, and most systems seem to put a message on that says “Don’t hang up, we’re experiencing heavy load”. Not the most calming thing to hear when your house is on fire, but what else can they do?
When they get a report of the same incident they’ll tell you others have already called it in and ask if you want to stay on the line. I assume most people don’t.
I thought about becoming a 911 emergency operator, but the office in my county had an awful time keeping people, not just because of the stress but because the management was so poor. And the pay was awful. It was barely over minimum wage.
I think folks are talking about two kinds of “hold” here.
In old fashioned human-operated receptionist stations, the human would interrupt one call they were working to briefly answer another, telling the second caller to hold, then returning to process the first. Lather rinse repeat, sometimes with 4 or 5 calls flashing = answered but awaiting any useful attention by the operator.
In modern systems, the computer answers the call, says “Your call is important to us, please wait in queue until your turn comes up” and there you sit. That is also commonly called “on hold” by customers although the industry term is “in queue.”
I would expect most non-rural 911 centers (PSAP* in the US argot) have fully automated queue handling. Callers are not getting a chance to speak to a human until there’s a human available to fully process their call. However long that may take. A shortcoming to this system is triage is impossible.
Not to be flippant (okay, to be a little flippant) but if they get an overwhelming number of calls…they are overwhelmed by them. If you have literally more of something than you can handle, then things don’t get handled.
One could certainly imagine a system where sudden spikes in PSAP traffic were analyzed by computer answering systems to geo-locate any “hotspots” in caller volume and signal the dispatchers separately from them needing to talk to dozens of panicky callers to try to discern what is really going on. Given a good municipal CCTV system they’d not need to talk to anyone once the computer cue them to look near 4th and Elm for the site of whatever mass-event just occurred.
Sadly, I doubt too many metropolises, and darn few leafy suburbs or low income rural areas have any such gizmos. Yet.
So although the dispatchers would not be talking to the majority of callers, or maybe even more than a tiny fraction of them, the underlying point they’re all making: “something awful happened / is happening near me” could still be delivered to the Dispatch center for appropriate response action.
That’s totally outrageous. Unless there was a major emergency happening at the time, one or more irresponsible idiots should be fired over that. Gross mismanagement of a public safety system is never acceptable.
Especially since he says it was likely illegal fireworks - I don’t generally hear fireworks on some random Wednesday in March. If I heard something then , I would think it was gunshots not illegal fireworks. I will think it’s illegal fireworks on New Years Eve and around July 4 - and certainly there are a lot of 911 calls on those two dates.
He doesn’t have to know. Failure of 911 to respond is, in my view, a serious failure in the public safety infrastructure that could put lives at risk. If it happened to me, I’d definitely report it to the city, county, or whatever the responsible authority was. If there was good reason for that to happen, such as a major emergency, fine, otherwise someone should be fired. Let them investigate and let the chips fall where they may.
Personally, I have never had 911 fail to answer right away. One time when my son was very young he accidentally dialed 911 – I think I foolishly had 911 on a one-button speed dial, which he had pressed. They called back immediately, a call that caused a very odd kind of ring that I had never heard before. (When I explained what had happened, they somewhat chewed me out. I felt like handing the phone to my three-year-old so they could chew HIM out – I mean, he was the one who had called them, not me! )
I imagine that 911 call centers in different areas could back each other up; presumably both Los Angeles County and, say, San Bernardino County would not be receiving a flood of calls at the same time (unless, of course, the anticipated big earthquake hits California).
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