Wednesday emergency managers in Snohomish County admit-- you're not getting the fastest response possible when you call 911, and they have a plan to change that.
When you call 911 in the county you'll either be routed to SNOPAC or SNOCOM.
From SNOCOM you may be rerouted to SNOPAC or from SNOPAC you may be rerouted to SNOCOM. That sounds like a lot of waiting when you're in the midst of an emergency.
"Each transfer on average takes about 21 seconds,” explained Kurt Mills, director of SNOPAC.
That's 21 seconds of waiting followed by however many seconds it takes to repeat your emergency to the next dispatcher; that’s especially common if you're in a small area of the county served by both SNOPAC and SNOCOM.
That was the case overnight Tuesday, when a woman was shot to death in her Everett doorway.
"Both 911 Centers were coordinating activities on this dynamic situation where there was a gunman at large so when you have two people or two groups in two locations performing the same job it's harder for them to coordinate,” Mills said.
So Mills and SNOCOM Director Terry Peterson want to combine forces. They've been analyzing the data for a year and a half.
They found in just one year there were 44,000 call transfers between SNOPAC and SNOCOM-- that equated to 11 days worth of people on hold which is clearly a life and safety issue.
Mills and Peterson have taken the consolidation plan to agencies all over the county; Wednesday night they're presenting it to Everett's city council.
“Every police agency, every fire agency, even our employees strongly support it,” Mills told us.
Plus the move won't cost anyone their job and will save the taxpayers about a million dollars. More importantly, though, it will save something far more precious than money-- lives.
"It will improve services for everybody not only with that pocket we've been talking about but improve services for the balance of the county,” concluded Peterson.
A decision on whether or not to make the consolidation will be made in October and if it is approved it will be implemented in January.
Cox Media Group
