Backup plan is under review after miscommunication
By Kimberly Durnan
The Dallas Morning News
Copyright 2007 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS — Dallas is re-examining its 911 backup plan after a computer glitch Tuesday morning created confusion among dispatchers, prompting some to briefly stop answering calls.
While there were no reports that lives were in danger during the outage, city officials said they were concerned about an apparent lack of communication and coordination among various city agencies while the system was down.
“We’re looking at it real hard,” said Kenny Shaw, director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management. “We do need to go ahead and clear up what we’re going to do.”
Tuesday morning, Dallas Fire-Rescue officials reported that the system went down during routine maintenance about 5:45 a.m.
Fire-Rescue crews were dispatched to patrol the streets, and the city was prepared to use the 911 system in other cities if the outage had lasted longer, said Lt. Joel Lavender of Dallas Fire-Rescue.
But by Tuesday afternoon, the city said the problem was not a system malfunction, but rather the result of miscommunication.
The city had switched to the 911 backup system overnight as the regular system underwent routine maintenance, said Danielle McClelland, a city spokeswoman.
When the main 911 system was restored Tuesday morning, there was a glitch and technicians reverted to the backup system.
Ms. McClelland said that is where the confusion began. City officials said the backup system requires emergency operators to switch to a different phone line. Some operators were not aware that they were still on the backup system and used the wrong line.
“Calls were going through, but some operators may not have picked up,” Ms. McClelland said.
Emergency operators and police dispatchers recognized the problem within a few minutes and switched to the correct lines. Ms. McClelland said no calls were missed.
The 911 failure did not affect response to emergency police calls, Dallas police Lt. Vernon Hale said.