Atlanta 911 center director admits to serious problems over the weekend. Neighbors tell TV station about lengthy response time to a house fire.
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You may recall a January house fire in Atlanta where it took 22 minutes for firefighters to get to the scene. It turned out, despite 911 center director Miles Butler initially putting some of the blame on a caller who gave a bit of wrong information, that neighbors had called this one correctly. Later in the week Butler admitted retraining was in order for his people and that the citizens weren’t the problem.
A house fire this past weekend has more citizens claiming there was a delay of similar length to a house fire at a home where a birthday party for a young boy was being held.
I am still trying to understand a little more about this story and if there are more specific times than those provided by neighbors. Still, Miles Butler is admitting right away the center has some problems. Here are excerpts from latest story by WXIA-TV:
The head of Atlanta’s 911 center admitted to 11Alive News that they had serious problems with their call center this weekend. This comes two days after a fire destroyed an Atlanta home.
Late Monday afternoon, 11Alive’s Jaye Watson spoke with the director of Atlanta’s 911 center, Miles Butler.
He said they had problems this weekend; that engineers had to be called in to try to fix them; that calls were being left on hold for too long. That problem may have cost one family their home.
“The first answer I got was a recording saying do not hang up because you’ll have to get in the back of the line,” said neighbor Addison Williams.
Williams, 71, said he was on hold with 911 for five minutes before handing the phone off to his mother-in-law and running over to his neighbor’s burning house.
She held an additional ten minutes before she got a live operator.
“Everybody was standing in the street with their mouths open, you know, where are the fire trucks?” he said.
More than 20 minutes after the fire broke out in the basement near the water heater during April Mitchell’s little boy’s birthday party, fire crews arrived.
City leaders say a 911 operator shortage and mandatory furloughs could be to blame.
“So 911 operators are also taking the furloughs?” asked Watson.
“They have been, yes,” replied Atlanta city councilman H. Lamar Wills.
“So at any one time they may not be fully staffed?” Watson asked.
“That is very possible,” Willis answered.
In relation to the situation over the weekend, Butler said, “We had some issues with 911 this weekend. Phone calls were going into hold cues for too long. There were delays in getting them answered. Some calls got kicked over to other jurisdictions.”
