911 Calls Up in COVID-19 Hot Spots Including NYC

Calls to 911 are surging in COVID-19 hot spots and staying low elsewhere, the National Emergency Number Association reported. NENA surveyed 500 emergency-number officials. As of April 1, 30% reported an increase and 3% said calls greatly increased, mostly in hot spots for the disease. Calls about domestic violence and nonemergency requests for information are up. “People are simply staying at home, leaving individuals with fewer opportunities to find themselves in an emergency,” NENA said. Shelter-in-place announcements and temporary spikes in calls may correlate.

Daily calls to FDNY EMS increased about 50%, reaching a high of about 6,500, Dwyer said. “This is the busiest period in the history of EMS in NYC. On the busiest days we have had hundreds of jobs holding at any given time.” The average response time in March to the most serious calls increased about 3 minutes, he said. FDNY made a public service announcement “urging New Yorkers to only call 911 in the case of a true emergency,” and now receives fewer information-seeking callers Dwyer said. “Having the ability to quickly and accurately prioritize call types by severity is paramount.”

The bureau is staffing up as members work overtime, Dwyer said. FDNY EMS added 22 in-training call takers, taking live calls under supervision, and increased trained relay staffers who take lower-priority calls, he said. “We have had staff out sick, but we have been able to maintain staffing levels,” transferring field workers “with previous [emergency] dispatch experience."

Just like work from home has changed ISP network usage, people staying at home has impacted emergency call taking operations.

Stay at Home

Calls to New Orleans’ 911 and 10-digit emergency numbers are "fairly steady ... if not slightly dipping from our normal call volume,” said Orleans Parish Communication District Executive Director Tyrell Morris. Police and fire calls are reduced “as people are obeying the stay at home orders.” Morris has seen a 300% increase in nonemergency 311 calls, likely due to new COVID-related services for reporting self-quarantine, illegal evictions and large gatherings, and signing up for hot-meal delivery.

OPCD prepared with the city early on, “issuing directives, raising staffing levels and setting the pandemic level for the state,” Morris said. Temperature checks and deep cleans including disinfecting of stations are keeping call takers safe, he said.

Washington's Snohomish County's 911 call volume fell 11% in March, compared with the same month last year, and it has no extended wait times, said Operations Director Andie Burton. Police and fire calls are down, while nonemergency calls are flat, she emailed: “We attribute this largely to a strong sense of community and people following the governor’s stay-at-home order.” Calls for COVID-19 information “seem to come and go in waves” of 30-60 a day, she said. “We have seen a huge increase in domestic violence and robberies,” with death reports up nearly 30%, she said.

“Staffing levels are holding,” said the Snohomish County official. “We have had a few employees who need to stay home and self-isolate who wanted to return but couldn’t until the appropriate time frame.” The center did “extensive contingency planning to address the potential rise in call volume and/or an increase in absenteeism,” Burton said. If 911 loses call takers, the center may use administrative staff to answer nonemergency lines and work with other regional centers “to answer each other’s 911 calls,” she said.

The county installed a 911 call screening tool in early March that “allows us to identify high-risk patients so the fire department can take proper precautions,” Burton said. “We are working closely with our fire departments to send alternate response units to low-acuity flu/COVID-19 calls for service to help manage significant surges in patients, but so far the reductions in other types of calls has offset the increase in potential COVID-19 patients.”

Facing a 'Hurricane'

It's a matter of time before calls spike in San Francisco, said Department of Emergency Management Deputy Director Robert Smuts on an APCO webinar: “We're on a ship that knows it's steering into a hurricane, and we're just trying to prepare.”

Florida’s Miami Dade Police Department isn’t having a surge, and it opened call centers to field nonemergency COVID-19 questions, said Police Communications Coordinator Deborah Wesolowski on another APCO webinar. Coronavirus-related call volume went up in the first two weeks that Harris County, Texas, was tracking the outbreak but has come down amid more public education and stay-at-home orders, said Sheriff’s Office Communications Director Kathi Yost. More calls about burglaries and domestic violence are coming in, she said.

“We cannot afford to have a human-level failure at any emergency dispatch center,” Yost said. Call center procedures are revised daily, but “we're at such a heightened state of emergency … it's beginning to wear on everybody.” Miami Dade is adjusting internal policies, “making it up as we go,” said Wesolowski. Smuts compared it to “layering Swiss cheese,” adding one protection after another, hoping all the holes are covered.

The San Francisco department had a scare when one dispatcher tested positive for COVID-19. Officials traced who sat adjacent to the infected person, and medical professionals determined those individuals didn’t need to self-quarantine, he said. New Orleans’ Morris had six employees test positive, but they weren’t in the center when they became symptomatic, he said. His agency plans to bring in mental health workers to help call takers cope with lost friends and family members, he said.

Editor's note: This is one of an occasional series of articles about how telecom is adjusting to the pandemic. A past report was on how to keep emergency call takers safe: 2003180033. Another two reports examined how sheltering place is affecting residential broadband networks: 2004060038 and 2003190042. An upcoming story will examine how ISPs are keeping technicians and customers safe when the employees go to residences to fix internet and other gear.