Unified Call Taker and Changes for FDNY Dispatching

[Truck4 48]

The city now has the 911 operators handling all emergency calls and not forwarding them to EMS and FDNY:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/0...911_system.html

FDNY Special Units have seen thier numbers balloon since Monday. Instead of the FDNY dispatcher getting additonal information for an exact condition, calls are dispatched with the full required assignment with no other info available.

[LaurBecca7 1]

The city now has the 911 operators handling all emergency calls and not forwarding them to EMS and FDNY:

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/0...911_system.html

FDNY Special Units have seen thier numbers balloon since Monday. Instead of the FDNY dispatcher getting additonal information for an exact condition, calls are dispatched with the full required assignment with no other info available.

This is going to lead to some big problems. The calls should be routed to the people who are experienced in those type of calls. When you call 911 from a cell phone and get the wrong town or city because of the tower you hit the dispatcher tranfers your call. He/she does take the information from you and then call the right town or city. Its an idea that in the short sight looks good but when its thought out and taked out properly the problems will be seen and I strongly doubt that that happened.

[CAM502 6]

JBE....how's it goin so far??

[Mac8146 61]

Can tell you that we are responding "blind" we are not sure what we are going to in some cases and getting turned around due to additional info reducing units. Special units ie: haz mat squads rescues are getting more runs and turned around in most cases. Water leaks with full assignments, ceiling collapses with full building collapse response. Runs without apartment or floor location in buildings, gas leaks transmitted as haz mat runs hope JBE can add his opinion hear.

[JBE 328]

Ask and you shall receive Mac!!!!

Guys, I was around for the cut over Monday morning, and I haven't been back since. I am hearing horror stories from my colleagues right now. A little bit of advice,

If you need the FDNY for ANYTHING!!!

Call the following phone numbers.

Manhattan 212-999-2222

Bronx 718-999-3333

Brooklyn 718-999-4444

Queens 718-999-5555

SI 718-999-6666

Do not trust your safety, your lives, or the lives of your loved ones to a bunch of under trained amateurs. Call the professionals!!! What the papers aren't telling you is there is a clever ruse behind all of this. The clock does not start ticking on FDNY response times until it reaches the Decision Dispatcher at the respective FDNY Communications Office and we decipher the PD lingo and get it to the units in the field. An NYPD UCT theoretically could be on the phone for 5 minutes before we get it. Average response time by the FDNY is just about 5 minutes. What could have been a simple kitchen fire with extension to the cabinets is now blowing out the windows and extending into the rest of the apartment. Two 10-45's at the apartment door. All it will take is one angry resident and a TV crew. "Why did it take the Firemen 10 minutes to get here??!?!?!?" Our clocks say it took us 5.

Secondly, to the FDNY Firefighters out in the field, you are going to be hating life. SOC Matrix responses for collapses, when all it is is a piece of plaster falling from the ceiling because of a water condition. Reported Electrical fires from sparking lights due to water conditions, Reported Haz Mat jobs which are nothing more than gas leaks from stoves. You are going to be running and running a lot. When the real deal comes in, you may not even know it till you're there or you'll be tied up at something of lower priority. There have already been at least two mistakes this week. One in Queens that ended up in 10-45's, and another in Brooklyn which was a good mile plus away from the actual incident.

How it should be done simply is this. The caller dials 911, get the PD operator, asks for the Fire Department, and the PD operator asks, what borough and transfers to the appropriate borough. Secondly, instead of interrogating the caller, the PD operator should remain SILENT while the FD Alarm Receipt Dispatcher interrogates the caller and the PD enters the info into their CAD. The PD should only talk to FD when absolutely necessary.

But hey, what do I know??? I'm just a supervising dispatcher with 12 years experience, who has seen my dispatchers call the PD for something and say. "This is the Fire Department, Dispatcher 129 in The Bronx", and get transferred to one of my Alarm Receipt Dispatchers on the other side of the room because the NYPD 911 operator isn't paying attention. Garbage in, Garbage out.

One last thing to the FDNY Firefighters out there, bosses included. You guys know PD is marking anything resembling fumes, odors, CO, car wrecks with washdowns, etc. as Haz Mat. I implore you, as I have on other message boards, including that R one, anytime you go out on any of those conditions, put in the proper code. Be it a 10-33, 10-32, 10-38, 10-36, 10-40. Then, announce a 10-80 no code. Get those Haz Mat numbers up!!!!

Fear not!!! We are actually keeping records of every correction we have to make and every screw up that comes down the pipe. Not like it will amount to anything but we have the ammo to prove that this was rammed down our throats and it's not gonna work. No offense intended, but this is not a small municipality like Putnam where you have the call volume that a unified call taker can handle. The burnout/turnover rate is going to be flat out ridiculous. I've said it before, as have a number of my colleagues, this is not going to go away till you have multiple 10-45's, or God forbid a Firefighter buys it.

Edited May 8, 2009 by JBE

[JBE 328]

One other thing I wanted to add to this when it comes to overblown responses for minor incidents. The locals have what dispatchers in the Bronx like to call, The Playbook. They will use certain buzzwords when talking to a 911 dispatcher or to an FDNY Alarm Receipt Dispatcher, to elicit a response from either agency. Simply put, they will make stuff up or embellish. It usually starts with how many kids they have, or just that they have kids. Followed up by I got asthma. Followed by I locked myself out and I got a pot cooking on the stove. Never mind it's 3 in the morning. The boiler turned on and the whole building shook.(Water hammer in the pipes, or the boiler really is that rickety)

We Fire Alarm Dispatchers tend to have a pretty good BS detector when the playbook is put to use. I don't see the PD doing that, since they transferred calls to us for lockouts and know full well we don't go. Or they hear those buzzwords and transfer it to us. Now, they just put it in as a run, the built in BS detector is now removed from the game. Oh yeah and another thing, this is for my colleagues in the field, you don't go to fires where the call back comes back to a cell site. Meaning the address of the fire is the cell site PD got. You will be going now. 10-6 kids, Bloombergs grand vision at its finest!!!!

Edited May 8, 2009 by JBE

[ny10570 745]

This nightmare is just beginning. The EMS switch has been delayed indefinitely after the loss of phones for close to 45 seconds and Verizon's admission that the installed phone bundles were not intended for this use when the buildings were constructed. They may literally melt under maximum load. No matter how flawed the system appears or is later proven to be this system was slated to open in 2006 and has cost the city over 1.4 BILLION dollars. No one who makes decisions on this nightmare is going to admit defeat.

But wait, there's more. When NYC lost its emergency operations center on 9/11 they learned the value of redundancy. So even though they are literally putting all their eggs in one basket they have plans for a 1 BILLION dollar backup. This one will be at the Hutchinson Metro Center in the North Bronx. So, if the Brooklyn communications center is disabled in a manmade or natural disaster there will be a handful of people on site to handle the work of dozens until off duty members can be recalled to staff the back-up facility. Unless the terrorists, earthquake, etc give us an hour or so heads up its gonna be a while before there's anyone can call 911. I've never been a fan of 100 years of tradition unimpeded by progress but there is a system in place that has worked extremely well and been commended for the way it works (9/11 and the blackout to be specific). The two billion dollars should have spent upgrading each agencies dispatch facilities and developing a functional fully integrated communications software. They're all going to be in the same building but still have incompatible dispatching software.

[JBE 328]

Aahhhh my friend, it is just the tip of the iceberg. These PSACs(Public Service Answering Centers) you speak of, are another Charlie Foxtrot waiting to happen. Here's the grand plan folks. EMS and PD will be shifted to two buildings, one at 11 Metrotech, and one on Waters Place up in the Bronx. Nevermind the fact it hasn't been built yet. Never mind the fact that over $100 million has been spent in renovations to the Bronx and Queens Dispatchers Offices, with money being spent on the Brooklyn Office, which may or may not become EMS communications. It may remain vacant as a fallback point.

For FDNY Fire Communications it's going to pan out like this. The Queens office presently houses Queens and Brooklyn Fire Dispatch, and is set up for SI, if the need arises. The Bronx Office has the Bronx, and is set up for Manhattan, if the need arises. Staten Island and Manhattan are presently in their respective offices, awaiting eventual shift to 11 Metrotech. You guessed it, right next to PD with EMS in the middle. ALL ON THE SAME FLOOR!!!! So let's diagram this. Manhattan, Brooklyn, and SI, along with EMS and PD. Same Building, Same Floor.

All of this is hingeing on the new Verizon phone system to be debugged. So all of it is on hold right now. I went for training on this system about a month and a half ago, and have completely forgotten half of what I saw. Could have also been I was just too tired to care. It's the same system Putnam-911 has. Lucky me, since I am now a boss in Manhattan, I get to be one of the first bosses to work in this Charlie Foxtrot known as PSAC, and will probably lose my identity as a Supervising Fire Alarm Dispatcher, and become a part of DOITT(Department of Information Technology and some other T). Don't laugh, this was brought up by DOITT and I pray that my union and my department fight that tooth and nail. I will also be schelpping from Chateau De Blue Eyes or points north to a building on Flatbush Avenue that is unsafe, in my opinion, and should just have a big a$$ bullseye painted on the Flatbush Avenue side. I'm not going to get into the lack of amenities, and lack of parking for the Rock Box.

Now, remember how I said, the Bronx and Queens offices were renovated?? Well if Mayor Bloomberg gets his way, the Bronx Office will be left vacant, and operations will move to Waters Place, after all that money was used to spruce the joint up. Two and a half years for the Bronx, over two and a half years for Queens. $100 million plus of taxpayer money spent, only to see both offices left vacant after a couple of years of use. Queens is also slated to move to Waters Place, and the office on Woodhaven Boulevard goes vacant.

I don't want to sound like I am whining. I'm really not. I don't mind the inconvenience of paying a toll and adding a half hour to my commute one way every day. I can deal with searching for parking, or just calling in to HQ and parking there. I don't like the idea of working in a building that could be a terrorist target, a la Oklahoma City. If something happens, the Mayor and a lot of his cronies are going to have a lot of blood on their hands, and I would rather my blood was not part of it. I also anticipate ridiculous amounts of lawsuits if an attack, or natural disaster should occur.

10570 brings up a very good point. The computer systems aren't compatible. While I have only seen fleeting glimpses of the EMS CAD, and never really gotten a look at the NYPD CAD, I am going to go out on a limb and say from my experience, they can't hold a candle to Starfire. I cannot understand how a 30 plus year old CAD system can be more efficient than more modern systems in many respects. I could go into numerous examples, mostly with highways and subways. I don't see how 600 East 125 Street in Manhattan can be an enveloping location for Wards Island, Randalls Island, and the Triboro Bridge. Whereas in Starfire, all are seperate locations. 1 Wards Island, Randalls Island, Triboro Bridge, with what part of the bridge having its own specific Box number. 116 BX IRT?? Token Booth number. Why not just say, IRT 2 Gun Hill Road?? That's how it goes into Starfire. Works just fine.

Once again, I don't want this to seem like I am whining or complaining. I am a firm believer in the philosophy that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As far as consolidation goes, I'm against it. When the plans were being drawn up for these renovations, I wasn't against moving EMS in with us. If anything, I saw that as a benefit. The only consolidation I support is Manhattan and the Bronx in one office on 180th Street. Brooklyn and Queens over on Woodhaven. Staten Island stays on Slosson Avenue, in trailers, while the office is renovated. EMS can have Empire Boulevard, it will be a step up from what they have now, or move Brooklyn back in and make it joint Fire/EMS once the renovations are done. PD can have Waters Place, and 11 MT. It all comes down to money folks. The city seems to think it is more cost effective to protect one building, as opposed to 4 or 5. Dollars and cents over people and livelihoods. Soap Box is now AQ, I'm going to bed. I got a long weekend of fun ahead of me and would rather focus on that right now. Hope to see some of you guys at Villa Barone on Sunday for Joe's wedding.

Edited May 8, 2009 by JBE

[grumpyff 1,159]

JBE wrote

10570 brings up a very good point. The computer systems aren't compatible. While I have only seen fleeting glimpses of the EMS CAD, and never really gotten a look at the NYPD CAD, I am going to go out on a limb and say from my experience, they can't hold a candle to Starfire. I cannot understand how a 30 plus year old CAD system can be more efficient than more modern systems in many respects. I could go into numerous examples, mostly with highways and subways. I don't see how 600 East 125 Street in Manhattan can be an enveloping location for Wards Island, Randalls Island, and the Triboro Bridge. Whereas in Starfire, all are seperate locations. 1 Wards Island, Randalls Island, Triboro Bridge, with what part of the bridge having its own specific Box number. 116 BX IRT?? Token Booth number. Why not just say, IRT 2 Gun Hill Road?? That's how it goes into Starfire. Works just fine.

Ah yes the piece of crap known as SPRINT, a 30 year old CAD program that you need a fricken guide to decipher, it runs on DOS baseed program I beleive. Former Transit Police learned all about this gigantic turd last year when they Shut off the old Transit CAD system. Higher ups promised us that having one system would reduce delays to high priority jobs such as 85s and 13s. What a load of crap. Still takes almost 10 minutes at times to get the info over the radio from street to transit, and vice versa. It took several months to get back info such as token booth locations/phone numbers, and emergency exit locations on the street. Under CAD each job got a Control Number, the CN(such 12345) in numerical order starting at 0001 on January 1. Any one with access to computer system could pull it up, and get all the info on the job just with that CN. Now with SPRINT, you need a separate Password to get in, you need the SPRINT number (a letter based on the day followed by a number such aas F12345, which resets every day at 0001 hours) Now to get any info you need the date of the incident, and need to know a lot of commands to decipher the info.

I know when I sat with the 911 dispatchers for a few hours, most seemed pretty smart. The actual police dipatchers when dumb as rocks. On the midnights we would catch them sleeping or disregarding the radio on a regular basis.

All this so Bloomdouche looks like he is saving money, so the public can elect him to a third turd, I mean term. He does not care about PD/Fire/EMS, we are all pieces of caca to him. Just look at how long Scoppetta and Kelly have been in their positions, morale has been on the decline for years on the PD side, but no change in site.

[weaselff 6]

No wonder my last 24 was unusually busy, with alot of full assignments on BS boxes. Guys were wondering what was going on. Hey JBE is there anything different in the way the text on the tickets are worded. It seems alot of guys were having difficulties reading the tickets, I even overheard someone ask what a UCT was? I think it would have been nice for the city to let the guys in the field know about his. I never heard anything about this program until now.

[CM36 4]

It really blows you have no clue what you are going and plus everyone and their mother is going on the boxes. A gas leak is now a haz mat call and your getting 3 and 2 rescue squad and their second unit and haz mat unit and haz mat battalion its unreal. The other day we went on a structural fell it turned out to be a person fell on the train track. This is going to get someone killed.

[dillondotcom 16]

HOLY CRAP!!! I work in the Bronx and just got off a 24. What a mess! We were responding into boxes blind with no clue what we were going to! We got a 2+2 response to what the ticket said was a Residental Dispatch. What the hell is that? Early this morning we got a call for the engine and truck for EMS mutiple trauma patient. It was someone with a twisted ankle and a brused wrist. I mean come on this us f*%#ing insane!

[JBE 328]

No wonder my last 24 was unusually busy, with alot of full assignments on BS boxes. Guys were wondering what was going on. Hey JBE is there anything different in the way the text on the tickets are worded. It seems alot of guys were having difficulties reading the tickets, I even overheard someone ask what a UCT was? I think it would have been nice for the city to let the guys in the field know about his. I never heard anything about this program until now.

(Quote)It really blows you have no clue what you are going and plus everyone and their mother is going on the boxes. A gas leak is now a haz mat call and your getting 3 and 2 rescue squad and their second unit and haz mat unit and haz mat battalion its unreal. The other day we went on a structural fell it turned out to be a person fell on the train track. This is going to get someone killed.(Quote)

OK, the UCT was brought up in a Department Order last week. Of course you're going to have problems reading the tickets because we're not the ones talking to the caller anymore. You may see 59R, that's the PD radio code for a residential fire. Person states they smell smoke in bldg, blah blah blah. Whereas we would put odor of smoke, clr Apt 3B. You have to translate PD lingo.

CM, I share your pain. I really do. And, like I said, it's either going to be multiple 10-45's or one of you guys buying it. It's going to get worse. I just hope it doesn't get to a point where we're calling out over the radio, "Any Engine available South of 42 Street??" and hearing silence.

Dillon, ever wonder why you don't go to car wrecks, or go 15 minutes after EMS and PD are on the way?? It's all in how 911 or EMS puts it in the system. If PD puts in 53I, or EMS puts in MVAINJ, FD is not getting a ticket. If they put it Trauma, or 53X, you're getting a ticket. They may upgrade it along the way. They put something like Trauma in, for the injuries you stated?? I honestly have to say, that's probably one of my guys not paying attention to what EMS has in the incident and just seeing TRAUMA and sending out a 5-7 signal.

[TL2L31 8]

And Bloomberg is running again. God bless you all!

[ryang 166]

My favorite one so far would have to be E247 asking if they were going first due to a car accident or a structural fire.

JBE, any idea how long this trainwreck is going to keep rolling until someone up there realizes "hey this isn't working"?

[JBE 328]

It's going to keep going until a catastrophic failure, meaning SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE!!!!!

[ny10570 745]

well, someone the media cares about. This cluster can and will kill off brown and poor people all day long before anything is done.

[JBE 328]

I just hope the nail in the coffin of this idea is the TV Crew and a pi$$ed off project dweller screaming how it took the FD 10 minutes plus to get there when in reality it only took 4 or 5.

[Guest]

First 24 was horrible, 2nd not so bad. What did they code things differently? I could care less if I never went to a car accident ever again.

[JBE 328]

OK, back from my first night with this fiasco. Had a Haz Mat condition on East 72 and Park Avenue for an unkown metal container on the corner. Nitrogen Tank used to cool off the phone lines. Had a couple of large outside fires, turned out to be religious celebrations. Read the text for one in Brooklyn for Ocean Parkway and Avenue P, next to Holey Place, probably because the call taker couldn't spell synagogue. Had another one in Battery Park, fire on the grass, turned out to be the Eternal Flame at one of the monuments there.

It's only going to get worse.

[JBE 328]

And to make things worse, we find out we're having our staffing cut as well. We're losing at least one person from our staffing starting in the next few months.

[dillondotcom 16]

JBE yeah I was aware of the reasons we sometimes get sent to a car accident and the tow trucks and ems and esu are already there and sometimes already taking up. Its the fact that we at times are responding in blind. We had a few calls this 24 were the ticket said pretty much nothing but the address. Then we would get some more information on the way. When we are responding to something blind we dont know if it is a fire, gas, or something else minor. So when responding to what turns out to be an ordor of gas and we get into an accident, the first thing that will be said to us is "Why were you responding to an odor of gas like you were going to a fire?"

[JBE 328]

Unfortunately, that's what it's going to take to get this madness stopped. You're flying blind to a box and it turns out to be something relatively minor, and God forbid your company wraps up and takes out a church van from the local storefront house of worship.

[Guest Rogue Rescue]

We are about to go to a new CAD system which will be civilian call takers and dispatchers and 1 fire service supervisor.... Hopefully it will work better than what you guys are putting up with.

[houlidsa 76]

not enough time to comment but I've been dispatched to:

two car (structural) - so what is that 2 cars into a building? or 2 cars on fire in a building, my mistake fender bender

water w/ full collapse response

Also FYI "CC" is child caller, another nice FYI when you are literally killing yourself running to a call

[houlidsa 76]

sorry forgot this morning's "reports smashy" as in person smashy, at least we got the possible EDP on the way

[ffp20 14]

The changes the FDNY brothers will face are gonna suck. I work in a city where pd handles call taking AND dispatch. The operators are PD employees, the people running communications are cops. They take NO input from FD and city always backs up the cops viewpoint. They dont give a rats a** about ems/fire communications/operations. The dispatching is police oriented through and through. turnover is huge, many "dispatchers" dont know the difference between engine and truck or the diff between als/bls. EMD???? its there but most often not done.

I hope it doesnt get to that point in NYC.

[JBE 328]

It's already at that point.

[CFD320 35]

This SUCKS!!!! All the FDNY manuals preach that size up begins at the receipt of the ticket and it actually did, until now.

Unknown Condition = Life Alert Malfunction (1+1)

2 Structural Fire (1+1) = Car fires

Subway Fire on the El (1+1)= Man down on the tracks

Several Unknown HazMat (3+2 HM Batt, Squad, HM1, Rescue Batt, Rescue) = GAS LEAK

And whoever is putting these things in the cad doesn't know what "second source" or "fill out the box" really means.

I feel even worse for our dispatchers that are second to none on the planet that have no information and are trying to keep things going smoothly.

AND ESU ARE GETTING HUGE HEAD STARTS

[ffp20 14]

there you go, usu getting head starts. lets not have them out there doing cop work, lets have them out there doing everything else. Those are the things that will happen when you have police oriented fire dispatching and call taking.