When Chatham County christened its integrated 911 call center in October 2023, county leaders heralded its automated efficiency. On camera, Chatham County Manager Michael Kaigler said, “Everybody will have all the information. It will be accurate. There’s no room for error.”
But during a Wednesday afternoon workshop with the Board of County Commissioners, Chatham 911 and Emergency Management Services (EMS) officials attempted to explain the challenges they have faced as reports of unanswered calls, long wait times for ambulance dispatches and complaints about lack of attention and urgency by emergency medical technicians mount.
Chatham County District 1 Commissioner Helen Stone said, "I'm receiving, for the first time since I've been a commissioner, complaints about 911." Stone was elected to the commission in 2004. The complaints, she said, have "increased significantly over the last eight months to a year."
Staff shortages, volume of calls hampering 911 Call Center efficiency
Chatham County efforts for the county to take over the 911 call system began in 2018, when the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department partnership dissolved. The Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) System that serves residents throughout the county, the city of Savannah and all other municipalities except for Tybee Island, took five years to develop.
The workshop presentation by Chatham 911 and Chatham Emergency Management officials revealed that, among more than a dozen challenges mentioned, staffing shortages coupled with a high number of calls from both residents and tourists has hampered Chatham 911's efficacy and efficiency.
Chatham 911 Communications Director Diane Pinckney, a 38-year veteran of the department, explained that the call center should be fully staffed with 110 employees but has more than 20 vacancies, among them 17 communications officers and five call-takers. Four newly hired call-takers are slated to begin training on Jan. 22, but, for months, trained temporary workers and other employees working overtime have been filling the gaps.
Fully staffed, Pinckney said, Chatham 911 would have 16 full-time call-takers and 50 communications officers working in groups of four in 12-hour shifts handling the current average of 1,500 calls per day and dispatching police, fire, EMS and first-responder units while providing pre-arrival instructions to those units as well as to those who made the calls. Those calls involve individuals under stress who can be hysterical, irate, suicidal, non-English speaking, hearing or speech impaired.
According to Pinckney, initial training for call-takers lasts eight weeks. The learning curve for communications officers is at least one year.
“Four [call-takers] for a county of 300,000 plus visitors, the tourists, that doesn’t sound adequate to me,” said Stone.
“It is exciting to me that you all are aware of this,” Pinckney said, “because now we can get the adequate staffing that we need to service the public.”
“I just wish that if y’all would have short-staffed earlier, that y’all would have said something to us and tried to get the funding," Stone said. “because I hate some of these emails that I've been getting from people saying, you know, ‘we didn't know what to do, we waited on the phone, we tried nine minutes.'
“I’m really concerned,” continued Stone. “Y’all are our initial response to helping people in crisis. And if you don’t have what you need, then I’m not doing my job.”
Chatham 911 Deputy Director Russ Palmer detailed some of the challenges with the sheer volume of calls coming into the center, stating that many do not represent emergencies or are misdirected. Better public education of the City of Savannah's 311 non-emergency call system as well as the 988 mental health hotline would go a long way toward reducing misuse and abuse of the 911 emergency call system.
The bigger challenge has been with mapping issues. Palmer said that Chatham 911 staff met with AT&T earlier in January to finalize a contract to update Chatham 911 to a "Next Generation 911 Center." The new technology will allow first responders to pinpoint a 911 caller's exact location, especially when using a cell phone.
“Part of our challenge of trying to locate people and part of having to stay on the phone with them for extended periods of time, especially if they're tourists trying to figure out exactly where they're at,” said Palmer.
This is a developing story.
Drew Favakeh is the public safety and courts reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at DFavakeh@savannahnow.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: With rise in complaints about Chatham 911, officials details staff shortages, mapping issues
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