D.C. tries to get a grip on 911 delays and understaffing

D.C.'s 911 system is reeling from a summer of lapses, and one lawmaker is dialing up scrutiny on the city's call center.

Why it matters: In an emergency, seconds count — but D.C.'s 911 responders are understaffed, police or ambulances have ended up in the wrong city quadrant, and callers are sometimes stuck for minutes on hold.

Driving the news: Council member Brooke Pinto is proposing a bill that would increase transparency for future mishaps.

• An after-action report would be required within 45 days for any situation in which "there is reason to believe errors led to serious injury or death," her office announced.
• 911 call recordings, transcripts and other documents would have to be made public.

Pinto also pledged that her Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety will hold monthly public oversight hearings into the Office of Unified Communications, which oversees 911 calls.

The intrigue: Committee staff will "conduct routine unannounced visits" to the call center this fall.

• "These unannounced visits aim to increase insights and transparency into day-to-day operations," her office said.

Catch up fast: There were delays dispatching aid for a 5-month-old baby last month, who died after going into cardiac arrest at a Northwest apartment.

• It took 1 minute and 20 seconds for a 911 call to be answered, and an additional 2 minutes and 40 seconds to dispatch a response, per NBC4 . The wait time for the transporter to arrive was an additional 17 minutes.
• Officials said a computer failure was to blame and that they had cut ties with the contractor.
• Since December 2023, there have been 18 outages of the computer-aided dispatch system, city officials said last month.

Glitches have plagued the 911 call center for years. There was confusion surrounding the 911 response to the District Dogs daycare that flooded last summer, when 10 pets died.

• Even though 911 callers described scenes of heavy rain pouring through walls, dispatchers told responders that the facility was having a water leak.
• Over 100 advisory neighborhood commissioners shared "grave and growing concerns" about 911 in a letter last September.

Zoom out: Even though 911 is a basic city service, understaffing is a nationwide problem.

• Many cite stress and low pay as reasons for leaving those jobs.
• Nearly 20% of employees who quit cited overtime as a reason, according to a survey of 774 respondents from 48 states by two industry associations .