Pa. county eager to use new 911 system

By Tim Puko
The Pittsburgh Tribune Review

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — Allegheny County expects today to start using a new computerized 911 dispatch system, a $10 million replacement of an outmoded system that officials hope will improve emergency responses.

The system will give Pittsburgh and county dispatchers one streamlined platform, which they have not had since the 911 center merger five years ago. Known as “computer-aided dispatch,” or CAD, the program from contractor Tiburon is supposed to track emergency vehicles digitally and alert dispatchers to which specialized response teams are closest to emergencies.

This has been a difficult task at the center, said city Emergency Medical Service union head Anthony Weinmann. The current system sometimes gives top priority to 3-day-old calls and sometimes fails to connect dispatchers with obvious matches, like River Rescue for water emergencies, he said.

“We’re still fighting to get the right unit to the right call. That’s always been our contention with the (Emergency Operations Center),” said Weinmann, president of the Fraternal Association of Professional Paramedics Local 1. “They’ve said the new CAD will resolve all the issues we’ve been having.”

County emergency officials did not return several calls for comment Friday. They are working on a “very complicated” transition, moving people between computer terminals just a few at a time, a process that was scheduled to begin early today and be finished by early this week, county spokeswoman Megan Dardanell said.

Two deaths this year highlighted other problems with the county’s old system, also created by California-based Tiburon.

In June, the system incorrectly — and inexplicably — changed the street address of a dying baby when a 911 call-taker hit the wrong symbol key while trying to add an apartment number, county officials said. The error delayed paramedics by seven minutes, and 3-week-old Jordyn Anderson of Crafton Heights died an hour later, though county officials said no evidence suggested the delay caused the death.

After the February death of Curtis Mitchell, who had waited 30 hours for emergency responders to reach his Hazelwood home in a heavy snow, a city-county investigation showed some emergency workers were not properly using the CAD for record-keeping and communicating. Since Mitchell’s death, Pittsburgh has sent firetrucks to all emergencies, resulting in faster responses, city Public Safety Director Michael Huss said.

Some senior city officials visited the Emergency Operations Center last week to study the new system, Huss said. The best addition is a new set of mobile computer terminals, which will give first responders faster access to more detailed data while out in the field, he said.

“We’re glad we’re getting an upgrade,” he added. “It’s going to have a lot more capabilities than the CAD we currently have, a lot more features.”

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