Glitch in 911 cut a lifeline

Police radio system fraught with problems, but won’t be fixed soon

A man in a wheelchair was having a seizure. Another at a bus stop had chest pains and trouble breathing. At a Davie apartment, neighbors tried in vain to resuscitate a man who had an apparent heart attack.

None of them could get help from 911 because their calls went unanswered.

For an hour in April, people experiencing emergencies — or the people trying to help them — couldn’t get through to Broward County’s emergency operators because of a system software problem.

More than 200 calls were affected by the lunchtime problems April 27. Emergency managers said they were not aware of any critical repercussions, but a South Florida Sun Sentinel review of the audio records made when 911 operators contacted the missed callers showed many instances where help was needed.

And operators trying to get through

were able to reach fewer than half of those who had called. They left voice messages for many and got no answer, busy signals or other failures to connect for others.

The county’s emergency communication systems have been beset with problems in recent years, primarily because of a deteriorating police radio system in need of a replacement that won’t come until the end of 2019 at the earliest.

Problems have cropped up with newer parts of the system, too. The part that handles the incoming calls has been around for about eight years and has been upgraded, but that didn’t stop the April disruption or a similar four-hour problem in 2016. The April 27 incident lasted from 11:50 a.m. to 12:53 p.m.

The calls, instead of going to operators, were automatically dumped into a queue for abandoned calls, when callers hang up before an operator answers.

It took emergency managers about 15 minutes to figure out what was going on, and 45 more minutes to get the system working correctly again. In the meantime, 911 operators called numbers from the abandoned calls list to see if emergency help was needed.

“The calls were being called back as quickly as possible,” said Brett Bayag, the county’s assistant director of regional communications and technology. “It’s a concern any time any of our systems have inconsistent behavior or become unavailable.”

Operators were able to make contact with fewer than half the people who called during the hour lapse. They left voicemail messages for about 55 numbers and got no answer, busy signals, disconnections or other interruptions on about 60 of the numbers. They coordinated assistance for people they reached still waiting for help to arrive.

“It’s too late. It’s super late. I think the kid just died,” a neighbor of Charles Yaw, who died at the Brentwood apartments in Davie, told the operator who contacted her. “We were trying to call, all the neighbors trying. No answer. What happened?”

The audio recordings that were reviewed remove the caller’s name and phone number for privacy reasons.

Police reports indicate Yaw, 30, probably died before any calls were made to 911, but his mother has retained an attorney over the incident.

“I’m still in shock, shock and disbelief,” Carol Wolff said.

She had checked on her son at about 9 a.m. and he was alive, according to the police report. When a neighbor looked in on him at 11 a.m., he wasn’t breathing.

Wolff told police they called 911 at 11:05 a.m. and could not get an answer. Emergency 911 officials said their system didn’t start having problems until 11:50 a.m.

In Deerfield Beach, an 82-year-old woman had called from her car because a person she had a restraining order against was at her home, threatening her.

“I’ve been trying to call

for the last 15, 20 minutes, couldn’t get anyone, but I need them here,” the woman told the operator who called her back. “I’m afraid to leave. I’ve been sitting in my car, and I just need the police either to talk to her [or] tell her to leave.”

Some took matters into their own hands, with a few tracking down police help on their own. During one callback, a man told the operator that the situation was OK — “Her mother took her to the hospital.”

To fix the computer problem, a software patch has been installed by West Safety Services. The company is also training its workers to immediately switch over to a backup system when a problem arises, to ensure that services are restored while a solution is identified.

The April 27 incident was followed by another on May 18, when operators weren’t receiving information about abandoned calls following a system upgrade. The problem, recognized almost immediately once the upgrade was finished, went on from 6 to 7:40 a.m. During that time, only a dozen calls were abandoned. Technicians forwarded those numbers to operators as soon as they came in, so they could check back to see if 911 assistance was needed.

“The system, usually when they hang up, it’s supposed to be on a systemgenerated screen to call them back,” Bayag said.

The county is currently investigating two other computer problems that occurred with another part of the communication system on June 1 and 5.

The problems were with the year-old computeraided dispatch system, which links the information the 911 operators receive to the police and fire-rescue crews that respond to the calls.

Bayag said the two problems this month were for short periods of time and did not cause any interruptions of service. Operators were able to take down information by hand and relay it to first responders, he said. Officials are waiting on final reports to determine exactly what went wrong.

By far, the most significant issues with the county’s emergency communications have been with the police radio system, especially during the response to the Parkland school shooting in February and the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting in January 2017. Both incidents had massive police responses, and the system couldn’t handle the number of officers trying to use the radios at the same time.

The radio system did not break down but went into a protective mode that hampered police efforts. It left many officers unable to communicate with dispatchers or one another. Some turned to using hand signals to communicate with other officers near them.

The upgraded system expected next year will have more radio channels for police to use and the ability to handle significantly more radio traffic, officials said.