Pretty much.
LEOMemorial writes:
when you're taking calls, is it so busy (and shorthanded) that you have calls waiting for you?Not 100% of the time. But there are plenty of times in any shift when there are more than five 911 calls are waiting for service, sitting unanswered. The fortunate thing is that most of them are from those damned cell phones that were misdialed. In fact, we don't have hard numbers, but we'd bet that well over 50% of 911 calls don't get sent to zones to be dispatched. That would be mainly due to the high number of idiots who accidentally (or idiot children who purposely) dial 911 with no desire or need for service.
Here's a good laugh, though. The most calls we've seen waiting unanswered totalled 90-plus. We have a picture of the banner board from that time, if anyone can guess when it's from. We won't post it and get caught up on "unauthorized dissemination," but surely all any PCO has to do is wait until this summer to see it for him/herself. There are 4 unanswered calls as of this writing.
Labels: Laughs, understaffing
posted by CPDDispatch @ 12:00 PM
9 Comments:
I'm going to guess the most waiting unanswered 90 + calls was either :
1. the evening of the plane crash through the fence at Midway Airport Dec 8, 2005
2. the day of the fire downtown, Oct 17, 2003 when several people died
or 3. the night of the E2 nightclub disaster when numerous people died.
Sad, very sad.
4th of July night when the computer crashed!
Yes, it was 4th of July of '05 when the computer crashed not once, but twice. At about 12:00 midnight and again at 4:00 a.m. If I remember correctly, it was more than 90 calls in the red - may have gone over 100. That was fun.
Being a dogass and having nothing to do each day, I come to work and I check for the totals I answered the day before. Usually I average between 37 to 41 calls per hour. When its busy that can go up to 46 to 51 calls. Of all those calls each day answered, 69-70 percent are no police service, cell phone hang up, child playing on the phone, or tansfered from 311 where people hang up with ANI/ALI displayed.
when the airplane from ohare started on fire and spewing parts across the city's northside
How do you check for your own call totals? An EQ?
does your board sound off when you have 'x' amount of calls waiting!?
the hell hole i used to work at had that lovely feature. when i came in saturdays, it was already going off. holidays, we had 30-40 calls waiting the entire shift since people freak out with too much time on their hands.
Yep. I feel for you. all work, it seems, holidays, weekends, etc.
don't forget to take time out for yourselves and look out for each other, because nobody else will...
xoxoxo
Ahhhhh memories.....how about those lovely July days in '04 when the entire electrical system in the "state of the art" 911 center failed and the whole building went dark? Three days of having to work at the 311 building made me appreciate our yukky computers more than I ever thought I'd appreciate them. (It has been long overdue, however, for us to be getting upgraded equipment). I happened to be RDO on the day the system crashed, but I hear it was a VERY eerie feeling to to have been sitting in that darkened room looking at a blank computer screen while the realization washed over you that something was terribly wrong and "OH SH**!!" was probably heard all over the room!!
Oh, and who remembers Halloween night 2002?? The gas company made a mistake and injected too much off the tell-tale "eau de gas leak" aroma into the system, and the rotten egg smell seeped into hundreds of basements all across the south and west sides of the city, making people think there was a gas leak in their houses!! The call volume was already so bad that night, what with it being HALLOWEEN on 3RD WATCH and all, they had to use the PCO1s who were in training to come out on the floor and serve as runners for all the "gas leak" cards that were being written up for the fire department who of course could not handle the call volume with their SIX call takers. We must have had upwards of 100 calls in the queue that night. It felt like it anyway.
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