By Jennifer Saltman, Vancouver Sun
SURREY — Communications issues between E-Comm and the Surrey Fire Service dispatch resulted in many 911 callers getting busy signals or being put on hold during a major windstorm in 2015.
More than 700,000 people lost power for days when the storm brought lashing rain and 80 to 90 km/h winds to the Lower Mainland on Aug. 29, 2015.
In November 2016, the Metro Vancouver board of directors asked staff to review the 911 service to determine if performance during the windstorm was within the terms of its contract with Emergency Communications for B.C., or E-Comm.
Staff were asked to focus specifically on issues that happened within the Surrey Fire dispatch system, which takes calls for 33 fire departments in B.C., from Surrey and Langley to Salmon Arm.
The investigation found issues with the telephone network, policies and procedures, and staffing.
According to E-Comm’s annual report for 2015, the storm caused the single-largest surge in 911 calls in a compressed timeframe in E-Comm’s history.
At the peak, staff took more than 600 calls an hour, and over the course of the afternoon there were more than 1,800 calls — triple what would be received on a typical Saturday. Even though additional dispatchers were brought in, many callers were put on hold and 40 per cent of calls never connected, receiving a busy signal.
E-Comm has since added more capacity to take calls.
Surrey Fire Chief Len Garis estimates that Surrey dispatch received about twice as many calls as usual and was overloaded, which also resulted in busy signals and holds after calls were transferred from E-Comm.
“That was one of those big, huge events that saw more calls than the system could absorb,” Garis said. “I think the main conversation around all of this is clearly that we had some challenges with the technology, and processes, and policies and some of the staffing levels. Those have been adjusted.”
Garis said Surrey has since expanded its capacity to take and triage calls, upgraded its telephone network and is working on programming issues that can prevent the Surrey and E-Comm systems from communicating the way they should.
“We recognized there were some chokes in the system,” said Garis.
During major events that generate high call volumes, Garis said, Surrey needs to be able to adapt and change its policies and procedures, such as the number of firefighters and amount of equipment sent to each call.
“In these types of events, we need to be able to adapt to business rule changes,” he said. “I don’t think the whole system was amenable to doing that.”
On the staffing front, it is now quicker and easier for Surrey to call in extra staff when needed.
Garis said Surrey and E-Comm learned a lot from the storm.
“I won’t say it was a good experience, because it was crazy, but we don’t sit back and dust our hands off. We do after-action analysis of every major event and we look for opportunities to do better,” he said.
Garis said the public can also help with call volumes during major events by making sure they are only calling 911 in an emergency. For example, E-Comm was swamped with calls during the storm from people who wanted to know when their power would be restored.
“I honestly believe most people believe it’s an emergency, but I really hope they think carefully about how urgent it is at the time,” he said.
