District of Barriere CAO Colleen Hannigan presented a report from the Thompson Nicola Regional District prepared by Ron Storie, Director of TNRD Community Services as part of her report to mayor and council at the Dec. 16, regular council meeting.
911 services constitutes a combination of dispatch of police, fire departments, and/or ambulance directed to E-Comm 911 since the fall of 2014. E-Comm is considered a primary service answering point or PSAP. Generally speaking, 911 works when the person requesting assistance from a 911 operator is routed to either police fire or ambulance. Police calls that require response are down streamed to the Kelowna RCMP, acting as a secondary dispatch. Fire calls routed from the PSAP are down streamed to Kamloops Fire Dispatch as a secondary dispatch. Ambulance calls are down streamed to the Province through the BC Emergency Health Services in Kamloops, as a secondary dispatch.
“The report provides interesting information showing the call volumes that are handled by 911 on a region-wide basis,” said Hannigan, “The number of calls reflects the number of people calling 911 to report an emergency. Areas along main highways, or in areas of higher population, or tendencies for emergencies (MVI, fire) that can be seen, such as Barriere, will always have higher call volumes. The stats do however show a steady increase in call volume.”
The report is a summary of the E-Comm 911 report call volumes for the 2018 fiscal (January 1 – December 31, 2018). Storie notes, “Call volumes have increased approximately 2.7 per cent over the previous 2017 fiscal call volumes. This year call volumes for years 2015 through to 2018 were included for comparative purposes to be more indicative of how call volumes are trending.”
It was noted that the Ecomm reports are based on Telus call data, which includes a small number of communities that are outside the TNRD (ie. Falkland, Bridge Lake) which can skew the table.
Highlights to consider in the report included:
• The 2018 data reflects an approximated 2.7 per cent increase in call volume over 2017 data
• 911 PSAP call-answer service levels are well above target, 98 per cent and have been since 2015. The target is for 95 per cent of the calls to be answered in less than five seconds.
• The abandon call rate for the TNRD is 17 per cent which represents a consistent abandon rate with most other regions which range from 9 per cent to 19 per cent. Abandoned calls are those calls where the caller inadvertantly or purposefully calls 911 but hangs up before the call answerer can address the call. In B.C. police are required to follow up (investigate the cause of the hang-up (this is not the case in all jurisdictions). Abandoned calls account for 20 per cent of all calls.
• Contact with 911 operators is a combination of cell phone, residential, business, and payphone methods which represent 71 per cent, 17 per cent, 11 per cent and one per cent respectively.
Storie’s report concludes, ” Now that the TNRD has been with Ecomm 911 for almost five years we are starting to see a number of trends.
He notes,”The trends seem to indicate that 911 calls within the TNRD are on the rise slightly, abandoned calls remain at about 17 per cent, call answer service levels remains at 98 per cent, and cell phone usage is on the rise, while hardline usage is in decline.”
The report shows the following North Thompson community call volume numbers for 2018:
• Barriere – police 624, ambulance 344, fire 89, abandon 166, inter PASP 83 = total 1,306
• Blue River – police 175, ambulance 43, fire 17, abandon 44, inter PASP 4 = total 283
• Clearwater – police 432, ambulance 181, fire 44, abandon 141, inter PASP 38 = total 836
• Little Fort – police 218, ambulance 68, fire 16, abandon 29, inter PASP 23 = total 354
• Louis Creek – police 2, ambulance 0 , fire 3, abandon 2, inter PASP 0 = total 7
• McLure – police 0, ambulance 1, fire 0, abandon 0, inter PASP 0 = total 1
• Vavenby – police 153, ambulance 33, fire 45, abandon 103, inter PASP 6 = total 340
