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NOTE: Please refer to original story posted by Martin Thompson: http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0034YJ

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Title: 911 System Fails Second Time in 2 Days / Callers got busy signal for an hour Source: The San Francisco Chronicle Publication date: 2000-05-02

San Francisco's 911 dispatch system failed yesterday for the second time in two days, giving emergency callers a busy signal for nearly an hour until incoming calls could be redirected to another location. The shutdown occurred because of a Pacific Bell switch failure at 2:40 p.m. and was fixed about four hours later, said Mike Martin, the city's 911 project director.

Harried dispatchers kept track of emergency calls with pencil and paper instead of their high-speed computers while technicians hunted for the problem.

"If we get hit with an earthquake, then we'd be hard-pressed, but other than that, we're in good shape," Martin said shortly after the system went down.

The 911 line was completely dead for about an hour until Pacific Bell technicians temporarily rerouted emergency calls to the San Francisco Police Department's Northern Station at Turk and Fillmore streets.

The faulty switch was discovered and full service was restored at 6:45 p.m.

It was the second major glitch to hit the city's brand-new emergency dispatch system since Sunday night when a computer failure forced the Fire Department to revert to a manual backup system for about 30 minutes.

Neither incident resulted in serious consequences for the public, authorities said. It was unclear how many calls to 911 went unanswered during the interruptions.

All city hospitals, fire stations and law enforcement agencies were alerted to the potential danger during yesterday's phone blackout, Mayor Willie Brown said. John Britton, a spokesman for Pacific Bell, said the company's "best minds and brains" worked to discover the cause of the problem, which seemed to be localized at the 911 center at the Hall of Justice.

Officials thought at first that a cable had been severed because the system died without warning at 2:40 p.m. "It was black and white - - it was there one minute and gone the next," Martin said.

The two system failures came less than three weeks after San Francisco opened a new $167-million emergency dispatch station in a seismically strengthened building at 1011 Turk St.

But the new system is being phased in gradually, and all incoming 911 calls are still initially answered on the 4th floor of the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant St., where yesterday's phone service blackout happened.

The new TRW Computer Aided Dispatch system went online April 12 after a series of cost overruns, employee complaints, computer problems and interdepartmental battles delayed its debut for more than a year.

Morale among the dispatchers has not been good, said Tim West, field representative for the Service Employees International Union.

"They feel they weren't ready to switch over to the new system yet," he said.

Martin declined to comment on the morale problems, but said they had nothing to do with the incident Monday. "No matter what anybody feels, the dispatchers handled today's situation professionally," he said.

Publication date: 2000-05-02 ) 2000, YellowBrix, Inc. http://realcities.yellowbrix.com/pages/realcities/Story.nsp?story_id=10283271&site=charlotte&ID=realcities&scategory=Computers%3AY2K

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 02, 2000

Answers

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Title: 911 System Fails Second Time in 2 Days / Callers got busy signal for an hour Source: The San Francisco Chronicle Publication date: 2000-05-02

San Francisco's 911 dispatch system failed yesterday for the second time in two days, giving emergency callers a busy signal for nearly an hour until incoming calls could be redirected to another location. The shutdown occurred because of a Pacific Bell switch failure at 2:40 p.m. and was fixed about four hours later, said Mike Martin, the city's 911 project director.

Harried dispatchers kept track of emergency calls with pencil and paper instead of their high-speed computers while technicians hunted for the problem.

"If we get hit with an earthquake, then we'd be hard-pressed, but other than that, we're in good shape," Martin said shortly after the system went down.

The 911 line was completely dead for about an hour until Pacific Bell technicians temporarily rerouted emergency calls to the San Francisco Police Department's Northern Station at Turk and Fillmore streets.

The faulty switch was discovered and full service was restored at 6:45 p.m.

It was the second major glitch to hit the city's brand-new emergency dispatch system since Sunday night when a computer failure forced the Fire Department to revert to a manual backup system for about 30 minutes.

Neither incident resulted in serious consequences for the public, authorities said. It was unclear how many calls to 911 went unanswered during the interruptions.

All city hospitals, fire stations and law enforcement agencies were alerted to the potential danger during yesterday's phone blackout, Mayor Willie Brown said. John Britton, a spokesman for Pacific Bell, said the company's "best minds and brains" worked to discover the cause of the problem, which seemed to be localized at the 911 center at the Hall of Justice.

Officials thought at first that a cable had been severed because the system died without warning at 2:40 p.m. "It was black and white - - it was there one minute and gone the next," Martin said.

The two system failures came less than three weeks after San Francisco opened a new $167-million emergency dispatch station in a seismically strengthened building at 1011 Turk St.

But the new system is being phased in gradually, and all incoming 911 calls are still initially answered on the 4th floor of the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant St., where yesterday's phone service blackout happened.

The new TRW Computer Aided Dispatch system went online April 12 after a series of cost overruns, employee complaints, computer problems and interdepartmental battles delayed its debut for more than a year.

Morale among the dispatchers has not been good, said Tim West, field representative for the Service Employees International Union.

"They feel they weren't ready to switch over to the new system yet," he said.

Martin declined to comment on the morale problems, but said they had nothing to do with the incident Monday. "No matter what anybody feels, the dispatchers handled today's situation professionally," he said.

Publication date: 2000-05-02 ) 2000, YellowBrix, Inc. http://realcities.yellowbrix.com/pages/realcities/Story.nsp? story_id=10283271&site=charlotte&ID=realcities&scategory=Computers% 3AY2K

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 02, 2000.

Faulty switch shuts down 911 for nearly an hour

By Ray Delgado OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

A faulty Pacific Bell switch shut down The City's 911 emergency phone lines Monday, leaving anyone who tried to call in to the system with a busy signal until a backup system kicked in nearly an hour later.

Although officials could not immediately determine whether any calls were missed by Monday afternoon's meltdown, it didn't appear that any critical incidents resulted, said Mike Martin, the 911 communications director.

"We don't know (how many calls were missed)," Martin said. "Nobody called up and said they couldn't get through or were put on hold."

The shutdown occurred at about 2:40 p.m., a typically slow period for dispatchers at the 911 center at the Hall of Justice. However, the problem wasn't detected until later when the dispatchers realized they weren't getting any emergency calls, Martin said.

"It was a good time of day to have this happen," Martin said. "It was before the commute. There wasn't a lot of activity in the bars."

A backup system at the Northern District police station on Fillmore and Turk streets was activated at 3:30 p.m., allowing 911 calls to once again be received until the main system was repaired and put back on line at about 6:45 p.m.

Mayor Willie Brown, who monitored the problem, said he was pleased with how the emergency backup system had functioned.

"We are doing exactly what we've trained to do, what we've practiced to do," Brown said. "We're not reinventing any wheels." Three alternate numbers

During the shutdown, city officials used the media to alert callers of three phone numbers they could use to reach 911 dispatchers until the backup system was functional. Hospitals, fire stations and police on patrol were told to be alert for emergencies.

Meanwhile, Pacific Bell technicians worked quickly to determine where the problem with the main system had occurred and why. At first, the problem was thought to have been caused by a severed cable, but Pacific Bell spokesman John Britton later said it had been caused by a faulty switch for an emergency phone system at or near the Hall of Justice.

The switch controls a number of phone lines coming into the Hall of Justice's 911 center and apparently cut off all the phone lines when it malfunctioned. Britton said sabotage was not likely and that technicians would carefully investigate the problem to ensure it didn't happen again. Results of the investigation will be shared with The City and the Federal Communications Commission.

"This is a very rare occurrence, I'm told," Britton said. "People can't think of any other time that this has happened."

Although it was unclear how many 911 calls had been missed during the estimated 50-minute shutdown, Martin said dispatchers working out of Northern Station and The City's new Emergency Communications Department on Turk and Laguna streets had fielded 61 emergency calls to the backup system: 34 to the Fire Department and 27 to police. The system typically handles about 1,600 calls per day, or an average of about 66 calls per hour, Martin said.

Getting the backup system up and running also went smoothly, Martin said. System being moved

The 911 system is in the process of being relocated to the Emergency Communications Department from the Hall of Justice as part of a $167 million system overhaul.

Assistant Police Chief Earl Sanders said he was pleased with the way the backup system had operated.

"We can, of course, always get better, but I thought it went off OK," Sanders said. "This is what happens nowadays with technology. It's so fickle."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? file=/examiner/hotnews/stories/02/911.dtl

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 02, 2000.