EFR concerned dispatch problems could hurt service
January 25, 2012
By Caleb Heeringa
Fire agency considers dropping out of regional fire, police dispatch group
A botched software upgrade at NORCOM, a regional fire and police dispatching agency, has Eastside Fire & Rescue officials considering leaving the regional partnership less than three years after its formation.
NORCOM, a Bellevue-based consortium of cities and fire districts that coordinates emergency response for 14 fire districts and five police departments from Shoreline to North Bend, went live in September with New World – an integrated software system aimed at combining dispatching, record-keeping and GPS technology for both police and fire units. The software replaced TriTech, an older system that had been used by the fire districts in NORCOM.
But the new software, which had already been delayed by more than a year, was taken offline after just 16 days. EFR staff complained that the new system often crashed and did not dispatch the nearest unit to every call.
“For the safety of the public and for first responders we had to get back onto a system that was stable,” said Sheryl Mullen, public information officer for NORCOM.
The agency, working with New World officials, has set to ironing out the kinks, but has yet to provide fire officials with a timeline on when they expect the system to be operational. Given the long delays already experienced, Chief Lee Soptich, EFR’s representative on NORCOM’s governing board, is skeptical.
“My confidence level is zero that they’re going to be able to turn anything around,” Soptich said.
Back to the old way
NORCOM has reverted back to the TriTech system, but incompatibilities between the old software and the new computers installed in the EFR units in preparation for the upgrade has left EFR with a less effective dispatching system, Deputy Chief Wes Collins said in an interview.
Most glaring is the loss of the so-called “automatic vehicle locator” function, which allows the dispatcher to see the location of a fire truck or aid unit that is on its way back from a call. If a potentially life-threatening call came in near that unit’s route, the dispatcher would not be able to tell, Collins said.
Instead of sending the unit that was already on the road, they would likely dispatch a different unit from the nearest station. Collins said it’s not out of the question that this could mean a two or three minute delay for that first unit to get on scene.
Collins added that the old servers that underpin the TriTech system are “nearing the end of their life cycles” and could be a threat to crash.
“We’re stuck in three years ago as far as functionality,” Collins said. “These may not sound like real big issues … but they could cause delays that we don’t want.”
EFR officials say some of the issues stem from the fact that NORCOM is serving as a test case for New World. The company is widely known for its police dispatching software, but had to produce a special version of software for NORCOM since the agency dealt with so many different jurisdictions and dispatches both police and fire departments. Sammamish Police dispatch through the King County Sheriff’s Office and are not a part of NORCOM.
Soptich expressed his frustration with the process at a Jan. 12 EFR Board of Directors meeting, saying that things had gotten bad enough that he had reached out to the Seattle Fire Department and the Kent-based Valley Communications Center, which dispatches for fire agencies in Renton, Auburn and Maple Valley to ask if they had the capacity to add EFR to their systems. Soptich said officials at Valley Communications Center indicated that it may be two years before they could take on more partners. Even in a best case scenario, switching dispatch centers would be a six-month ordeal, he warned.
Soptich said the lack of a time frame for getting the fire dispatch system working is worrying. The agency is hoping to have the police dispatch system ready by the end of the month, but can make no guarantees for fire officials.
Mullen noted that EFR representatives had been in favor of a different vendor for dispatching software from the beginning of discussions in 2007. She said she wasn’t surprised to hear that Soptich and the rest of the EFR administration had been looking at other dispatch options, but said the agency is confident that an integrated New World system is possible, despite the delays.
“Chief Soptich needs to do what is in the best interest of (EFR),” she said. “I think we’re providing him with a good service and I think in a lot of ways he would agree … We think New World is going be working at some point.”
Other models have their own problems
EFR Fire Marshal Bud Backer pointed out in an interview that switching dispatch centers would be a trade off. Fire agencies typically band together to do dispatching because it makes it easier to dispatch “mutual aid” – units from neighboring districts that respond to calls just outside their boundaries. If EFR were to go to a different agency for their dispatching but Redmond stayed with NORCOM, it would require one dispatch center to pick up the phone and call another in order for Redmond units to respond to Sammamish. These cross-border calls for assistance often happen in cases of house fires or major events.
“You’d think (communication between dispatch centers) would be quicker than you picking up the phone and calling 911, but it isn’t always,” Backer said.
EFR Fire Marshal Bud Backer said the New World dispatching system was not to blame for the response to the Aug. 24 fire in Sahalee that destroyed a home and nearly took the life of its elderly resident, since the switch to the new software wasn’t until several weeks later. EFR fire trucks responded to the home within the agency’s response time standards, but officials blamed “communication failures” between EFR units and NORCOM dispatchers for the delay in getting a paramedic to the scene to treat the resident of the home, who was suffering from smoke inhalation and burns.
Soptich reported that other members of NORCOM’s governing board, which includes fire chiefs and officials from member cities like Bellevue and Kirkland, had encouraged him to be patient with the process and discouraged him from talking to other dispatch centers. Soptich said the board was afraid of the prospect of litigation between the agency and New World if the project falls apart.
Patience runs thin
EFR board members shared Soptich’s exasperation with the whole process.
“I’ve had quite a few dealings with some pretty lousy vendors, but never anything like this,” said Dee Williams, North Bend’s representative on the EFR board. “(NORCOM) is concerned about litigation with (New World) – I could care less about litigation with (New World). If we’re not are careful we’ll have litigation with our customers.”
EFR Board Chairman Ron Pedee applauded Soptich for being proactive about the issue while NORCOM’s other partners refused to confront the reality – that the software wasn’t going to work.
“They’re doing a Kabuki dance for their elected boards instead of telling the truth,” Pedee said. “This is a train wreck – let’s not get hurt in it.”
EFR officials said they supported such a large undertaking because the idealized efficiency of an integrated police and fire system was appealing to many of the elected officials and city managers that sit on the agency’s governing board. A police officer on an integrated system would be able to quickly bring up a neighboring jurisdiction’s information on a suspect and a fire unit responding into a neighboring city would have an automated map giving them the best route.
“Everybody wanted NORCOM to succeed, so everybody joined in on this,” Collins said. “But I think that for some agencies this ending scenario seemed obvious.”
Sammamish Mayor Tom Odell, one of the city’s representatives on the EFR board, said at the Jan. 12 meeting that the lack of a plan from NORCOM and New World officials was the last straw.
“We’ve been talking to NORCOM for three months now,” Odell said. “How patient are we going to be, folks?”
Other reactions
Not all of NORCOM’s partners share EFR Chief Lee Soptich’s pessimism about the project. Mark Chubb, interim fire chief at Woodinville Fire & Rescue, said such a large software overhaul is bound to have some sticking points.
“We’re not at the point where we don’t believe that NORCOM can’t solve the issues that have arisen,” Chubb said. “We’re confident that the NORCOM leadership has a handle on the problem. There’s been some issues – some of which have been the responsibility of (New World), some of which have been the responsibility of NORCOM and some of which have arisen from customer expectations.”
By customer expectations, Chubb said some of the partners may need to scale back what they expect the program to do.
Chubb, who was not around when NORCOM elected to go with the integrated police and fire system, said he was surprised by the scope of the project when he arrived on the job.
Chubb said a single software system that efficiently manages dispatching and record keeping for police and fire agencies spanning nearly 1,400 square miles is “almost unprecedented.” He said two separate systems for police and fire is more common at police and fire dispatch centers like NORCOM and would likely be a Plan B if New World doesn’t work out.
Chubb said the earlier delays coupled with the recent failed launch has EFR “exercising an excess of caution” but that a New World system that meets some but not all of the earlier expectations was still possible.
Redmond Fire Chief Kevin Donnelly said he was hopeful that New World could become operational, though he noted that Redmond is not an official partner in NORCOM and is only contracted with the agency through 2014, at which time the department would be surveying its options for dispatch.
“I’m hopeful this is something that can get solved, because the regional dispatch model is something that we support,” Donnelly said.
Police and fire agencies dispatched by NORCOM
Bellevue, Clyde Hill, Kirkland, Medina and Mercer Island police departments, Bellevue Fire Department, Bothell Fire Department, Duvall Fire District 45, Eastside Fire & Rescue, Fall City Fire District 27, Kirkland Fire Department, Mercer Island Fire Department, Northshore Fire Department, Redmond Fire Department, Shoreline Fire Department, Skykomish Fire Department, Snoqualmie Fire Department, Snoqualmie Pass Fire & Rescue (Fire District 51), Woodinville Fire & Rescue
Reach Reporter Caleb Heeringa at cheeringa@isspress.com or 392-6434, ext. 247.
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