About two weeks after “a perfect storm” of complications for the Lake County 911 department, Commissioner Mike Repay, D-3rd, said there needs to be better communication.
“I believe there were multiple things that occurred at the same time, which contributed to the calls not being answered in a timely manner on that particular day,” Repay said.
On Aug. 27, after a guest at a Food Bank of Northwest Indiana event needed medical attention, calls to 911 went unanswered, according to Post-Tribune archives. According to a Lake County 911 report obtained by the Post-Tribune, about 160 calls went through the communications center between 10:15 and 11 a.m., 100 emergency calls and 60 non-emergency.
“During those 15 minutes alone, the center received 51 incoming 911 calls and 29 incoming non-emergency calls,” according to the department’s report. “That is 80 incoming calls in 15 minutes, or approximately one new incoming call every 11 seconds.”
Lake County 911 Director Mark Swiderski was unable to be reached before deadline Wednesday. Repay previously said he’s looking into the situation, promising a full investigation, according to Post-Tribune archives.
According to the 911 department’s report, scheduled maintenance of the computer-aided dispatch system began at about 10 a.m. Aug. 27, and the telephone system remained operational and all calls were still received. The automated non-emergency artificial intelligence call-handling system also had to be taken offline during the maintenance and was back online at about 11 a.m.
Calls were sent directly to communications center personnel during the system outage, which was at the same time as the increase in 911 traffic.
“There should have been better communication and a schedule of events that requires sign-offs for required software upgrades,” Repay said, adding that he didn’t know the systems would be offline during the time. “That’s just one component of the failure.”
Repay also added that he doesn’t believe the system upgrades should’ve happened during the morning.
He also said staffing issues could’ve led to the Aug. 27 situation.
“There’s also still issues related to having the right people in the right seats for enough of the time,” Repay said. “That was certainly a factor.”
According to 911 department records, a phone number associated with the complaint called several times during the outage, and multiple calls had extended ring times.
“The records also showed that the caller disconnected and redialed 911 multiple times before the previous calls could be answered,” according to the records. “When a caller disconnects from an unanswered 911 call, that call ends. If the caller redials, the new call is presented to the system as a new incoming call and enters the queue based on the time the new call is received. In this situation, each time the caller disconnected and redialed, the caller lost the previous position in the queue and the new call was presented behind calls that were already waiting.”
Between 10:30 a.m and 10:45 a.m. Aug. 27, Lake County 911 recorded 43 abandoned calls, including multiple from the phone number associated with the complaint.
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The Lake County 911 commission has not yet met since the Aug. 27 incident, Repay said, which is the oversight body for county dispatch. The commission is made up of 19 members from police, fire, emergency management agencies, county commissioners and the county council.
“They’ve only received the narrative report and have not asked for or received any sort of in-depth investigation,” Repay said. “It’s highly likely, I would say, that there’d be some sort of official direction or official procedure that’s going to be required when those software issues need to be upgraded.”