By SIOBHAN SCHENZ is a Santa Monica resident concerned about public safety.
HONORABLE COUNCILMEMBERS: Fire service, police service and public schools are the city services most often considered when choosing a community in which to live.
The size of a community is another consideration as it can directly affect the quality of public service received.
As you are aware, in Santa Monica, the responsibility of dispatching fire and para-medic emergency calls made to 911 has been handed over to the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) Regional Dispatch. Whether a Santa Monica Fire Department (SMFD) or LAFD unit responds to an emergency in Santa Monica, is determined by the LAFD.
If there is an emergency call in Los Angeles, a SMFD unit may be sent. With a better firefighter-to-resident ratio in Santa Monica than in L.A., our firefighters are now more frequently sent to calls in Los Angeles than they were before the regional dispatch contract.
While Santa Monica fire units are busier than ever, one LAFD command staff member admitted that the new dispatch arrangement has “lightened the load” of some of their L.A. fire units.
Our firefighters have also been sent out on more inaccurately identified and categorized calls since the changeover. Communication with our first responders is suffering.
According to an LAFD source, in full operation at the busiest times, roughly 15 LAFD dispatchers handle the calls of four million L.A. residents, covering the 470 square miles of that city. During slow periods, even fewer dispatchers are on duty. These are not the numbers promised when the changeover was initiated, and this is inferior to the level of customer service Santa Monica residents received from their own dispatchers in the past.
In contrast, the SMFD used to have one dedicated dispatcher, 24-hours a day, aiding 86,000 residents living in an 8.2 square mile area. And SMFD operators were supported by SMPD dispatchers when needed. Our own fire department dispatchers had more time to handle each call, and greater opportunity to collect and assess information to process it accurately.
The LAFD dispatchers cannot be expected to have an intimate familiarity with our city. Our dispatchers did.
Automated dispatch technology might be your one and only methodology if you are covering one of the country’s largest metropolitan areas. The size of our community affords us the luxury of supplementing the automated method with more intimate knowledge.
My neighbor tried to contact the fire department when we discovered a downed electrical wire in an alley, not three blocks from a Santa Monica fire station.
The majority of the call, once transferred to the LAFD, was spent trying to help the dispatcher, who could not locate the alley on their system, even given the bordering street names. The caller eventually guided the dispatcher through a traditional map.
Though this dispatcher worked hard to resolve the matter, the call took too long. Even a state-of-the-art system cannot replace a SMFD dispatchers’ familiarity with the city.
One goal of the dispatch changeover is improved regional emergency response and mutual aid during a catastrophe or disaster. Even though regional cooperation and communication among first responders is a priority of the Department of Homeland Security and first responders everywhere, mutual aid among fire departments has always been a tenet of fire fighting, and does not require that our emergency calls be answered by the LAFD.
Furthermore, I am shocked to see that the line item for the service contract with the LAFD has gone from $250,000 last year to $632,457 in the proposed 2008-09 budget. This new system has been in operation for over a year now, and I believe it would be wise to conduct an examination and audit of its efficacy before approving this budget item.
Specifically, I am concerned that callers are waiting longer to speak to a dispatcher, and longer to receive aid. Any analysis of “response time” should be measured from the time the initial 911 call is made in Santa Monica, until the aid arrives on scene.
The “bottom line”is not just the $632,000 projected cost of the contract, but the cost of Santa Monica residents no longer having direct contact with our fire department in an emergency. I am not satisfied the LAFD dispatch arrangement provides the level of emergency service for which this community pays.
I eagerly await a response regarding review of this program, and encourage you to table this line item until such a study is available.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 30, 2008. Read the original PDF.