From another article linked to the one above:
"The audit found 57 per cent of calls made to the centre between July 2018 and July 2021 were for non-emergencies.
About 18 per cent of those were hang ups, three per cent were pocket dials, 12 per cent were not for police or emergency services, 14 per cent were asking for advice, and 10 per cent were for non-emergencies without imminent or potential danger or injury."
Yeah, if call volumes are causing delays, and the majority of calls to 911 are not actual emergencies, then the problem isn’t squarely on staffing or burnout, but idiots who have no idea how 911 works.
That’s not to diminish the fact that nobody in an emergency should be waiting longer than the standard ~15 seconds, but the blame needs to be spread to those clogging up the lines, too.
I also wonder how many of those hang ups and pocket dials were the result of shoddy iphone implementation of the SOS feature, which has been known to dial 911 when someone is not in an emergency (i.e. like on an amusement park ride).
It’s not just iPhones. I’ve got a Samsung galaxy s21 and numerous times this summer my phone in my shorts pocket registered a touch through my clothes and pressed the emergency button, despite having SOS disabled. All it takes is to swipe up from the lock screen, or even double tap a notification while the screen is off to get the emergency button.
I’ve got a Samsung phone, but have never had it dial 911 by accident.
My comment was in reference to several news reports last year about 911 problems related specifically to iphones.
But regardless of the phone, it sounds like a problem for the 911 operators! 😱
My son called 911 on his tablet a couple of months ago. It doesn’t even have a SIM card and it was locked, but he was playing make believe with the emergency call screen.
My wife’s Pixel 3a called 911 on its own somehow a couple years ago. Still don’t know how that one happened.
It happens. Just stay on the line if you do so they know they don’t need to call back or investigate.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nearly two years ago, a CBC Toronto investigation revealed how lengthy 911 wait times are more than one-offs in Canada’s largest city amid burnout-fuelled staffing shortages.
But more than a year after releasing that report, wait times on hold for 911 in Toronto have only grown longer and are happening more frequently, according to internal records obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
In one such report from July, the service noted it had partnered with the Toronto Police Association on a project to review current staffing levels and shift deployment at the call centre.
Through that partnership, a third-party consulting firm was hired to do the analysis work on new minimum staffing requirements and reviewing staff levels, as recommended by the auditor general.
On one of those days in April, a family in Etobicoke, Ont., who previously spoke to CBC Toronto waited on hold for five minutes and 23 seconds for 911 while their infant son was choking before hanging up and trying to save the child themselves.
While steps to help support mental health and optimize shift scheduling can happen at the communication centre level, Stewart told CBC Toronto managers need funding for staff to meet minimum standards like NENA’s 90 per cent of calls answered within 15 seconds.
The original article contains 1,302 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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