Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: "John C. Fowler" <0003513813@mcimail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: E911 -- All Operators Are Busy
Message-ID: <10007@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 22 Jul 90 17:12:00 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 506, Message 5 of 10


The County of Los Alamos (population approximately 20,000) has E911,
one 911 operator, and five 911 lines available.  My question is, what
do 911 services do if there are more calls than operators available?
Surely not "Thank you for calling 911.  All of our operators are
currently busy, but if you will hold, the next available operator will
assist you."


John C. Fowler, 3513813@mcimail.com


[Moderator's Note: They've probably done a traffic analysis which
gives them the information needed for staffing so that the problem you
describe would be very rare. Additional incoming calls would keep on
ringing until someone picked up or the call was abandoned. Here in
Chicago, the police dispatchers work in clusters: After the third ring
with no answer in a given cluster, the call is re-routed to another
cluster nearby. After six rings in total, the call is re-routed to the
supervisor's desk. But their staffing levels are based on known
traffic patterns; it takes a major incident to cause an overflow like
that.  PT]