Atlanta FD Audit Reveals Comm Center Delays

A city-ordered audit of staffing levels at the Atlanta (Geo.) Fire Department discovered that all components of incident handling in the communications center exceeded national standards and, in fact, contributed to more than half the increase in overall response time from 2008 to 2010. The City Auditor just issued their report that shows the number of incidents was up four percent over the two years, and 75 percent were medical incidents. The auditor compared the city’s response times to standards established by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA 1710). First, the auditor says it takes an Atlanta E911 calltaker 337 seconds (in 95% of incidents) to transfer emergency 911 calls to a fire dispatcher, compared to the 30-second NFPA standard. “E911 transferred fewer than 1% of calls within 30 seconds,” the auditor said in the report. Next, it takes a fire dispatcher 111 seconds to notify the assigned units, compared to the 60 seconds-or-less NFPA standard. Turn-out times for both EMS and fire incidents are also lengthy, the auditor found, about three times longer than the NFPA standard. Travel times are over double the standard, the audit revealed. The auditor said her analysis was hampered by the lack of comm center data—48 percent of incident timestamps were missing or unusable. Timestamps were also missing from medical incidents that originated from Grady Hospital. Because of the findings, the auditor reported she will investigate why 911 call transfer times are high, and if increased staffing would shorten overall response times. She will also investigate the missing timestamps and why fire units take so long to leave the station after being dispatched. Download (pdf) the auditor’s report.