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California Moves to Eliminate Delays in 911 Response

A new state Assembly bill calls for a two-year study to improve accuracy in pinpointing locations of 911 calls made from cellphones.

(TNS) -- When Jordan Soto’s father called 911 from his cellphone while she was having a medical emergency, the call was routed to a dispatch center 30 miles away.

Soto lived within a quarter-mile from a Santa Barbara, Calif., fire station, but responders didn’t make it to her home in time, and the 24-year-old died from an accidental drug overdose.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara. “They got there when it was too late.”

A new California Assembly bill calls for a two-year study to improve accuracy in pinpointing locations of 911 calls made from cellphones. AB 510 seeks to explore ways to eliminate unnecessary delays in emergency care for people in need. The bill was unanimously approved this month by one Assembly committee and now heads to another.

“We need to do a lot more to get ourselves and the 911 systems working better. Unfortunately, this is a life-or-death situation for a lot of people,” Williams said.

He said people should call 911 from a landline when possible because it is the most reliable way for an emergency responder to find their location. He said communication with dispatchers improved after an Office of Emergency Services project that allowed cellphone 911 calls to be routed more accurately and for the appropriate agency to respond.

Ventura County greatly benefited from the Routing on Empirical Data project, which started locally in 2009. But a large percentage of the Central Coast, which Williams represents, would benefit from something similar, he said.

While Williams concedes the bill isn’t going to completely solve the problem, he said it is a starting point.

“I intend to work until we have a sound 911 system for residents of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and the whole state,” he said.

Thanks to the 2009 project, Ventura County is at “the cutting edge” of 911 cellphone technology, said Erin Brockus, an assistant communications manager for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. Thanks to GPS and other improvements, when a cellphone caller here reports an emergency, the call is routed to the agency responsible, officials said. Previously, many of the calls just went to the California Highway Patrol.

Now, for example, if a crime victim calls 911 from Moorpark, the call will be routed to the sheriff’s dispatch center in Ventura and the dispatcher will initiate the appropriate response. If the victim is injured and needs medical help, a Ventura County Fire Department dispatcher can join the line, gather information and send units.

The primary answering points are at CSU Channel Islands; sheriff’s headquarters in Ventura; the Ventura, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Simi Valley and Port Hueneme police departments; and the CHP office in Ventura. If needed, calls get transferred to the fire department’s communications center in Camarillo, the county’s secondary public safety answering point, Brockus said.

Public Safety Answering Points for 911 calls in Ventura County:

Brockus said she did some cellphone testing and found the location system was “extremely accurate.”

“I told a dispatcher to tell me exactly where I was, and it was stellar,” she said.

But it’s not always that way, especially when dealing with older phones that are not GPS-enabled.

“We want callers to take the time to tell us where they are, because we don’t want to depend on GPS coordinates,” Brockus said.

Debra Zinskey, a supervising public safety dispatcher for the Ventura County Fire Department, said smartphones can give you a “ballpark location,” which is often beneficial but sometimes not at all.

“It ebbs and flows,” Zinskey said.

The more information the caller provides, the better, Zinskey said, especially if someone is calling from a large area like the Camarillo Premium Outlets. If a caller can tell a dispatcher which store they are near, the dispatcher can Google the store and learn exactly where the person is.

“We ask a lot of questions for 911-related calls,” Zinskey said. “It never delays the response, because we send units as soon as we’ve verified a location.”

©2015 Ventura County Star (Camarillo, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.