City School Northampton: Week 8 - Dispatch

Welcome. By this point, you have been following my exploits in City School. Congratulations, you've made it to one of the best classes yet. If you check out last week's class (or any other for that matter) right near the beginning, you will see that I explain what Northampton City School is all about. So let's dig in.

This week's class covers the Northampton Fire Department and Dispatch. I've separated this week into two parts. You will learn that the Fire Department does more than putting out fires and getting cats out of trees (they don't actually do that). You'll also learn that Dispatch, the people who answer our local 9-1-1, do more than that. Oh, and today's class ends with some fun.

Dispatch

Melissa Nazzaro has been at Northampton Dispatch since 2000, and its Director since 2006. She told our class more than you could even guess about Dispatch. If you look at the website for Dispatch, there isn't much there, and this makes perfect sense. If you have an emergency, you can call 9-1-1. And you can call it from anywhere. There isn't too much more to know. If you have a non-emergency here in Northampton, but are still kinda urgent about something, you can call the local number 413-587-1100. You will get the same people, but a different phone system and slightly different protocol.

Northampton has a civilian dispatch center. This means it is run by people who are not Police or Fire officials. This is a good thing. Those people should be fighting crime and putting out fires (and whatever else they do.) There are 12 people working at Dispatch and always 2 on duty. There were 4 on on December 27, 2009, the night of The Arsons. It used to be that if you called the Police, you got a police officer. But now you get a specially trained person who can dispatch one. If you have a fire, you'll get someone trained to tell you to get out of your house, so you can meet the fire truck when it arrives. Or if you are drastically ill, the person might talk you through how to deal with the emergency while you are waiting for the EMTs. If the next shift doesn't show up for some reason, the Dispatchers cannot leave. If there are extreme events (e.g. weather conditions) more Dispatchers might be called in to work.

Dispatch is located on the second floor of the new fire station on King Street. Their office has its own ventilation system and bullet-proof windows. (Hey, it's a new building and they have an important job, so what the heck.) If you call 9-1-1 from your cell phone, you'll get a different Dispatch over at the State Police barracks on North King Street. They serve all of Western Massachusetts. If your emergency is in Northampton, they will transfer you to the local one.

Training

Our Dispatch has Secure Communications Accreditation. This means the facility and the people who work there meet high standards. Prospective Dispatchers are interviewed and have a hearing test. Any employee has at least 12 weeks of training and they usually get more. They also get refresher training and of course learn new things as they go.

Here, I quote from my copious notes: 16 hours 9-1-1 training, 8 hours incident training (NIMS/ICS), 40 hours training in basic telcom. They receive 64 hours in Emergency Dispatching training. That's EMD/EFD/EPD where M=medical, F=fire, and P=police. (Here's one link for illustration purposes. It is not the actual link to the people who actually do the training our people). Some of this training is in using something like a flip-chart to talk you through, for example, doing CPR on your baby.

There's more. 32 hours of training in suicide, domestic violence, stress identification and management, active shooter. Can you picture that there are specific trainings for civilians in this stuff? Now, where was I? 36 hours of ride-alongs (with emergency responders) and court observations. 250 hours with a trainer going over our city protocols (our specific procedures) and equipment. Unlike other training, they get scored and have to do well and it must be documented. Additionally, they learn about the Computer Aided Dispatch program and how to use the radios.

Crazy Stuff

So perhaps you think that Dispatchers just answer the phone and then radio the Fire Department, eh?
Let me remind you here, that 9-1-1 Dispatchers are the people who talk the proverbial child through helping her mother deliver her new baby sibling. Just search the news headlines, and you will see this stuff happens all the time. It is not folklore.

Now imagine any of these scenarios: I'm going to kill myself. He's got a gun. I can't talk. I don't know where I am. Send help. The house is on fire. I smell smoke. And so on. And each on it's own phone call. Now imagine that you answer the phone and someone just had a car accident. You deal with it and hang up. It rings immediately and it's someone else who has a pain in their chest. Again you deal with it and hang up. Now it's someone is shouting, almost incoherently, and on a cell phone and will not say where they are. And so on. Every day. And Dispatch still must be polite and calm and quickly free the phone line for the next caller. And all this while on the radio with Police and Fire. And as soon as the EMTs arrive, the remote CPR instruction from Dispatch ends. For Dispatch, this event might be over, but they don't know how it ends. And so, the phone rings again. A nightmare.

To be fair, many people call 9-1-1 for non-emergency reasons and several emergency situations are resolved by Dispatch on the phone. But in our class we were told that whether they are answering the Business line or 9-1-1 it's equally likely to be a serious call or not. Dispatch must always suspect that something is wrong. Some people call, but are not clear even in what is wrong. I have a headache. Can you breathe? Oh, and sometimes the caller cannot speak English. And sometimes they cannot speak at all.

The Calls

9-1-1 started with the first call placed in Alabama on February 16, 1968. Now about  240M calls are made to 9-1-1 every year. About one-third are wireless calls, and here in Massachusetts more than half are. Massachusetts makes about 3.3M 9-1-1 calls a year which are answered by one of the 272 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs). Most recently, our state government has been talking about consolidating these to save money to spend on the war/banks. This might make sense, unless you want the Dispatcher answering the phone to have an intimate knowledge of your town and be aware that there is both a Bridge Road and a Bridge Street when they send the ambulance.

Dealing with cell calls can be challenging, because Dispatch cannot identify the precise location of a mobile caller. This might vary in detail from within phone-shot of a cell tower to longitude and latitude. Such calls may not matter as much if the neighborhood has no side streets. Of course, there's also the chance that the caller may be in a moving car.

Last year in Northampton, there were 34,000 "events" with about 10 calls per event. An event might be a traffic accident. 10 people on average will make a call. If it's one of the drivers, they will get some assistance. If it is the fifth report, they will be told thank you we know. Dispatch also get Police-initiated calls. Most calls are medical-related. 834 events last year were fire alarms. Fire dispatches are far fewer, but those incidents take much more work and take longer to resolve.

If needed, Dispatch has scripts to read which are transliterations of 14 languages. They can also route calls through a real-time translation service. They even have protocols for directing people who are unable to speak (perhaps they are mute, choking or too scared) to respond by hitting touch-tones®.

Additionally, Northampton Dispatch receives off-hour DPW calls for the city. They have procedures which might specify what to do if you are locked out of the Water Treatment plant. Dispatch will know who to call or tell you whether to find the key under the mat. (For the record, I made up that scenario.)

What else?

Melissa Nazarro told us she has learned the ability to track two conversations at once, which she says comes in very handy at cocktail parties. She played a few old recorded 9-1-1 calls for us and described the handling of these calls.

Here is a FAQ about 9-1-1 for you in case want more information. But really what you mainly need to know is to dial 9-1-1 and to identify your location.

Here's some amazing statistics about 9-1-1.

That's some of what I learned about our unsung heroes at Dispatch.

More

See the next post, when it's ready to learn about our Fire Department.

And use the comments feature below or email me to tell me what you think.

City School Northampton: Week 1

City School - A Great Idea

I expect to attend all 10 weeks of City School here in Northampton, Massachusetts. You may ask, what, pray tell, is City School? To give you an intro, please see my previous post. To summarize and save you time (although my ego would appreciate it if you read that post and send me your comments or post them at the bottom of my blog or link directly to my blog from your blog or - and this would be best of all - you could run with idea and try to get something similar started in your community.). See I haven't even summarized yet, so here I go.

City School is an education program for the citizenry of a municipality to acquaint them with how their city works and perhaps inspire them to volunteer their time or share their experiences with others. When I find out the origins of City School, I will share this. When I find out, I will not be surprised that the idea is simply the result of a stroke of brilliance by a civic-minded citizen of our town. Currently it is attributed to our mayor. But as I learned during our first week of City School, our Mayor is very busy - perhaps too busy to come up with this great idea.

I might as well say here, that I do not expect to be particularly particular here. I don't expect to criticize deficiencies that I encounter. (OK, I might point out something.) I will not strictly be a cheerleader. I know that most of the people doing the work here at City School are unpaid or under-paid and overworked. I have the easy end of things. I show up and listen. I ask questions and they are answered - no questions asked. (Errr, am I allowed to write a sentence like that last one?) I might treat the whole thing like my own private reality show. Except there are no cameras and I'm learning the reality of smaller end of government. Hey, this would make a great reality show - unfortunately there's not enough drama and no gimmick.

One more thing, I don't expect to put all my notes here. Sorry, but don't think I can deal with listing all the details, and I doubt you want to read it all.

Week One

OK, I've done two weeks of City School, and I had better do my homework here and catch up on this chronicle. We don't have real homework, although we were told that there might be some information that we would receive ahead of time, so we might be prepared. One advantage to being prepared would be that we could have good questions for the presenters.

Week One started off with me meeting the 17 other students and an aide to the Mayor of Northampton. Karen has been arranging all this, something I appreciate since she doesn't work full time and probably has better things to do at 6 o'clock at night.

School Committee

We had a presentation from Stephanie Pick who is on the School Committee. People elsewhere might call this the School Board, just like they call the "PTA" here the "PTO". The School Committee is elected. There are 9 members - one for each of our 7 Wards and 2 elected at-large. The Mayor chairs the meetings and also gets one vote. The committee also has a yearly joint meeting with City Council. Stephanie said that during elections most seats are unfortunately uncontested. (It's my impression that there is a theme in city government that if any seat is open, then it is likely to be contested, but otherwise the incumbent is likely to get a free-ride.) She spoke about how she first ran for School Committee - she was asked to run. She said how helpful it is to have a contested election - you visit constituents, debates issues, etc. (This is something I'm sure I will hear again.)

Stephanie had a few take-aways for us. One is that 61% of the city budget dollars go to education - $28 Million dollars. The allocation of this comes down to these 10 votes. Not enough people realize this. If you care, the you should get involved. If you care about an issue, speak up. They meet monthly on that 2nd Thursday of the month at JFK Middle School. They also have subcommittee meetings and special meetings. They review contracts and hire the superintendent of schools. They do many things. Stephanie said that unfortunately the always need to make do with less money each year. Even if they get a level-service budget, costs for everything will go up, so there will need to be cuts. Stephanie said that she has deep regrets cutting anything and also that once a program is eliminated, it is hard to ever restore. (This makes sense, since to bring it back, you'd be starting from scratch.)

It's my sense that the the people on the School Committee are parents, educators, and all are people who care about students and education. They are making very important decisions for our community and our children.

Mayors Office

Regrettably, the Mayor was not at our first meeting, but I am sure we will hear from her in the future.
(I actually have a syllabus, but I'm not about to type it in here. Plus it's top-secret. Just kidding about it being secret. BTW, I haven't named our Mayor here, maybe I'll name her later or after we finally meet in class. I've met her in the super-market - actually the Food Coop. Hey, it's a small town - that's one of my themes here if you haven't already guessed. Anyway, I will refer to her as 'her' or 'she' or 'the Mayor'. I've also chosen to capitalize whatever I want, so it stands out. I realize I could make it bold or put it in italics, but I probably won't. Oh, one more thing, as you may notice, I may include healthy digressions like this one.)

Representing the office of the Mayor was Chris Pile Finance Director of the City of Northampton. I will be missing some information here, as promised, but to summarize, our Mayor is busy. We have a 'Strong Mayor' form of government. This is something that has been in place since the city was incorporated in 1884. OK, it may have came after that, but it's in place. It's in the current city charter.

A 'strong Mayor' does everything. She is the Energizer-Bunny of the city. Here's a non-exhaustive list: the Mayor chairs City Council and the School Committee, signs contracts and city council documents, prepares agendas for same, does labor relations with the City's 14 unions, evaluates and supervises department heads and meets weekly with most of them, negotiates health insurance - with insurance companies, belongs to various advocacy groups like the Western Mass Mayors Association, the Mass. Municipal Association, and is spokesperson of the city. She is our public face. She meets with the Chamber of Commerce, local Representatives, presents the Budget. The budget includes a capital program to maintain city assets. (We'll learn more about finance later.) She mediates and meets with constituents. And from what I hear, she mediates a lot. Actually, everyone here mediates a lot (another  small town thing.) In all this, we were told that the Mayor is very busy. For contrast, the City of Worcester, Mass. has a "weak Mayor" (no offense intended). They hire a manager who does the heavy lifting and leave the Mayor in to represent the city in some way.

City Council

You thought I might be done, but no, there's more. We have a City Council. Like the Mayor, they were recently elected. David Narcewicz is the very new President of the City Council and gave us some information about it. There are 9 members, representing the 7 Wards plus 2 at-large seats. The Mayor chairs meetings and this is one of only 2 or so cities in the state in which the Mayor does so. This is by statute in our city charter. (In fact, all those weird duties of the Mayor I mentioned before are mainly based on what she has to do by law. In this case, it's city law, which being a city charter which actually makes it state law. If you are like me and not the lawyering kind, then you will wonder about the woven fabric of law. I feel like a little of it is starting to make sense to me. Perhaps I will look into the subject of Law a little more.)

The City Council can approve or reduce the Mayor's proposed budget. In other words, they are not allowed to mess with it or submit their own budgets. They can only do what I said back there 2 sentences ago. They approve major official actions by the Mayor. They meet the 1st and 3rd Thursday every month. Narcewicz who was elected by the rest of the Council as Council President gets to appoint people to committees. There are a dozen or committees and most everyone wants to be part of 2 or 4 committees and likewise there are 3 committees which nobody wants to be on. Narcewicz mentioned that we was about to make the appointment announcements and most Councilors will get their first choice, often Ordinance and Finance are popular, but some would end up on committees they were not interested in. To me, Appointments sounds dull, but then again you get to review potential appointments around the city and interview people, so perhaps it might be fun.

The Council is subject to the Open Meeting Law which requires an agenda, 48 hour notice, and minutes for meetings. It has been a subject of recent controversy of late. I'm pretty sure that emailing and texting to make decisions is a no-no. Generally, my sense is that usually is on the ball about this stuff. NCTV, our public access TV, records the meetings, and the Council seems willing to embrace new technology to meet the requirement to record them.

Much of this information was prepared by Narcewicz ahead of time, but as we are City School, many of the people in the class asked many good questions.

City Charter

OK, I can sense you are getting weary. I am getting weary. I think this has been a long class for you, so I'll try to finish up. Council President Narcewicz spoke to us about how city charters work. I can only give you my take. Basically to change the city charter, you need to elect a charter commission, then vote on their proposals. Alternatively, for some changes the City Council can adopt a change and then get the Massachusetts State Legislature to approve the change. Cool, eh? There is a new city charter review committee forming. They are simply going to read that long document and see if anything is antiquated or cumbersome considering it's been over a 100 years since the first version was written. You could see if you'd like to join it. Just call up City Council or the Mayor and see if they need help. If you want to read our city charter and all of its amendments, you will find it here. It's in a hypertext form. There are real things in the City Charter which maybe should go. We actually have this on the books:

In accordance with the provisions of the laws of the commonwealth, the Mayor and City Council shall annually in the month of January, and from time to time as may be convenient, appoint:

A. One or more Measurers of Wood and Bark and other articles.

B. One or more Weighers of Coal and other articles.

C. One or more Surveyors of Lumber. 

And the city does do it because they are obligated by the Charter.

Government Organization


We were given some organizational charts as to the structure of City Government. I may digest this for you in a different post, or if you are lucky, I'll never get around to it. Actually, if you are lucky, I'll find a copy of the chart on the web and and let you browse it at your leisure.

So that ends our first class. See you next week!