County hires expert to study dispatch problems

By JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Tone alerts to Flathead firefighters sometimes don't go through, causing delays in getting people to fire scenes.

Instead, 911 dispatchers occasionally have to try to reach fire chiefs on cell phones to alert them about fires.

On Tuesday, the Flathead County-City 911 Administrative Board hired RCC Consulting of San Bernardino, Calif., for $57,000 to study that problem and recommend solutions in three or four months.

This was one of the problems that faces Flathead County's 911 dispatch, which is a patchwork of three networks - Kalispell, Columbia Falls and Whitefish - one Flathead County network and 19 rural fire districts.

When Flathead County's main 911 center receives a fire call from outside Kalispell, it sends a toning sound to radios and receivers carried by chiefs and volunteer firefighters, alerting them to listen for information about a fire to which they should respond.

Occasionally, that tone alert fails to reach the intended firefighters.

In August, the county's 911 center handled 158 fire calls, and had problems with radio-dispatching firefighters eight times. That number has been somewhat constant, with the 911 center tallying seven radio glitches in May, nine in June and six in July.

In the past couple of weeks, the Columbia Falls and Marion fire departments had times when they did not receive timely tone alerts because of equipment shortfalls.

Much of the problem is that city and rural fire departments use different radio systems that aren't well-coordinated on equipment, spare parts and maintenance, 911 board members said. Although the RCC study will take a few months, board members also wanted to quickly fix as much of the problem as possible. Board representatives plan to discuss the matter with the Flathead County Sheriff's Office, which supervises the main county 911 center.

The board discussed other problems Tuesday, including:

. Trouble with 911 calls from cell phones. The first several seconds of a cell-phone call to the 911 center typically are unintelligible because of the time it takes for such a call to work its way through the transmission system. This is an industrywide problem, and the Flathead 911 center will have to wait until technology catches up to deal with this wrinkle.

The board wants to spread the word that people using cell phones to call 911 should stay on the line long enough for the call to reach an emergency dispatch center. This problem often shows up with calls from remote areas across Flathead County.

. Learning that the main 911 center has overtime-related staffing troubles.

Right now, the county's 911 center should have three to five dispatchers on duty at a time, but can manage only two to three dispatchers a shift. Training, vacations and sick times are cutting into staffing and overtime budgets.

. A lack of funding sources slowing efforts to find a location to consolidate Flathead County's, Kalispell's, Columbia Falls' and Whitefish's 911 centers into one complex.

About a half-dozen places in and near Kalispell are potential sites, said Turner Askew, chairman of the board's long-range planning committee.

But building plans, construction timetables, locations and other factors cannot be tackled in detail until funding is addressed, said Askew and Lisa Durand, the 911 center director.

. Briefing Denise Smith, an aide to U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., about why Flathead County needs money for update its dispatch equipment, which needs better features to track and sort emergency calls.

Burns needs the information to help justify asking for a congressional appropriation. The spending bill that would contain this allocation is expected to go to a U.S. House-Senate conference committee in early 2007, which is when Burns is expected to try to add the Flathead 911 appropriation.

No dollar amount for the sought-after appropriation has been nailed down yet. However, the 911 board said the sought-after equipment likely would cost almost $1 million.

The upgraded equipment would help locate calls that the current machinery cannot - especially cell-phone calls away from populated areas.

Durand said: "We have a lot of people get lost in the wilderness, a lot of tourists. We need to be able to find them."