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March 27, 2006
911 Fiddles While City Burns
When Stacey Hunter’s kitchen caught fire on March 20, she called 911. But no one answered. It was break time.
“You've got four people supposed to be dispatching and three people on break,” Hunter told the Associated Press’ Bill Poovey. “I can't still digest that.”
Hunter’s Missionary Ridge house didn’t burn down – her family members ran half a mile to the fire station – but Chattanooga’s 911 center is feeling the heat after Poovey examined records and found that 27,000 – read that number again – emergency calls went unanswered last year. By Friday, the story of our city’s 911 incompetence had reached the Boston Globe and Britain’s Guardian, while Hamilton County Sheriff and call center chainman John Cupp appeared on CNN, trying to explain the gaffes.
Chattanooga Police spokesman Tetzell Tillery said that the 27,000 figure was deceiving and that many of those calls were hang-ups or pranks. Which leads to a question: if you don’t answer the phone, how do you know it’s a prank? It could be Ashton Kutcher and his punk’ng pals. Or it could be your grandmother. Dying. You sort of have to pick up to know.
Cupp told the AP that Chattanooga’s call center suffers from understaffing, with only 68 of the needed 78 positions filled. “There is a shortage of personnel, and a lot of times when there is a shortage of personnel, you have problems organizing things.” But Mayor Ron Littlefield wasn’t buying that, arguing for the center to better manage its dispatchers. (Again, three of four operators on break? We’re with Ron.) Littlefield appeared on WGOW with Jeff Styles on Monday morning, saying that he had discussed the situation with County Mayor Claude Ramsey on a weekend trip. “We’re going to fix it,” he said.
News Update | By mesh | 12:29 PM
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