‘Seconds save lives.’ But for some Durham 911 callers, the seconds are adding up.

When Durham residents complain that the city’s 911 center can be slow to respond to emergency calls, they are correct.

The percentage of calls answered within 15 seconds by the Durham Emergency Communications Center fell from 86% to 78% during the first half of the year. Some calls took up to a minute or more to answer, recently released data shows.

The response times have gotten longer as the number of calls has increased. In July, the center received 27,913 calls, 32% or nearly 7,000 more calls than it received in January.

According to the National Emergency Number Association, 90% of 911 calls should be answered within 15 seconds or less, and 95% of calls within 20 seconds. The Durham center did not meet either standard, the city data shows.

Mayor Steve Schewel acknowledged the problem during an Aug. 20 news conference, after seven people were shot in Durham in less than 24 hours and some frustrated residents reported calling 911 multiple times trying to reach someone.

“Until we get to that national standard, it’s not acceptable and we’ll be working every minute,” he said.

But Schewel also asked for the public’s patience, The News & Observer reported.

“There were 81 calls that came in in a very short time period,” after the shootings, he said. “Hold. Hold the line, and you will be answered. Don’t hang up, or you’ll just be at the back of the line.”

Schewel also said during the press conference that July’s nearly 28,000 calls was “a five-year record.”

But a spokesperson for the National Emergency Number Association said standards for emergency call centers, also known as public safety answering points (PSAPs), exist for a reason.

“Seconds save lives,” said April Heinz, the association’s 911 and PSAP operations director. “Public safety answering points serve as the lifeline between the public seeking help and the responders who arrive to assist them.”

Staffing shortages

Randy Beeman, director of the Durham 911 center, has blamed delays in answering calls on staff shortages, The N&O previously reported.

The center had 25 vacancies in May, when a city spokesperson said it had eight people in training, The N&O reported.

However, in mid-August city officials said they still had 25 vacancies, out of 60 call-taking positions, with four people in training.

The N&O asked the city to explain why so many vacancies persist but had not received a reply as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Durham 911 center is working to recruit more experienced call takers, expand its training academy and offer overtime, Beeman said in an email.

The city posted its call time data on its website to be transparent about calls and response times, the mayor said.

How Durham compares to Raleigh-Wake 911

The Raleigh-Wake 911 center, which backed up Durham until June, has just two vacancies on its 101-person operations staff and answered 93% of its calls within 10 seconds last fiscal year, said director Dominick Nutter.

The Raleigh-Wake Center also has lower starting salaries than Durham: about $36,000 vs. Durham’s $38,000 for a starting call taker and $37,00 vs Durham’s $42,000 for a telecommunicator, Nutter said. Telecomunicators answer calls but can also dispatch some of the calls they receive, he explained.

Nutter said he could not explain why Durham is struggling.

“It’s hard to tell what’s happening [there], I don’t know,” he said in a telephone interview last week.

The partnership, in which unanswered calls rolled over to Raleigh after 30 seconds, had drawn some complaints, but some Durham firefighters have said problems persist.

With Raleigh, the calls were processed quickly, but the dispatchers got incorrect or not enough information, like locations, said Jimie Wright, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Durham Local 668. “But the problem now is, more or less, just do they have enough staff to be able to get to all the calls?”

“We’ve had quite a few people calling the stations. We’ve had people coming by the stations because they’re not getting through to 911,” Wright said. “That’s a concern for us, and it’s a concern for everybody in the city, too.”

Bonuses, mandatory overtime for staff

The Durham 911 center began offering bonuses up to $5,000 for external hires and for internal staff last week.

The center also has initiated mandatory overtime at 10 hours per month for its current staffers, city spokesperson Beverly Thompson said in an email Monday. The city, she said, “is grateful for the staff’s significant investment of overtime hours necessary at this time to serve the community as we work to hire more staff.”

Meanwhile, a member of the new Community Safety and Wellness Task Force says there may be another option to help reduce the strain on the call center. The task force is an appointed body of community members that advises the city on alternatives to policing and the criminal legal system.

“I think it’s absolutely urgent that we reduce the wait time for people who are seeking emergency response,” member Manju Rajendran said.

Offering Durham residents the option to call “skilled, unarmed, crisis responders in the Department of Community Safety could substantially lighten the load on Durham’s 911 call center,” Rajendran said in an interview.

The task force hopes to hold an 911 response and crisis intervention community forum sometime next month.

“The focus of our listening session in September will be to understand more deeply what kinds of responders Durham residents would like to see and what they are currently experiencing,” Rajendran said. “And certainly people’s experience with call-time response would be apart of that discussion.”

Staff writers Mark Schultz and Julian Shen-Berro contributed to this story.

This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 4:49 PM.