Fire Critic An Unadulterated View of the Fire Service
Miles Butler had been the 911 Chief for 19 months. His tenure has been riddled with lengthy dispatch times including two fires that took over 17 minutes to dispatch. One of those fires was located a mile from the nearest fire station. The house was a total loss.
With staffing issues, brownouts, trucks out of service, and other issues hampering firefighters this day in age the last thing we need is extended dispatch times.
“[Butler]’s always been a problem as far as I’m concerned,” said Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin. “The job was bigger than he was able to handle.”
The report later states:
A 2008 city audit, assessing the reliability of data in the computer-aided dispatch database, found that the center’s problems predated Butler’s tenure.
“We were unable to conclude whether the data is reliable because the contractor responsible for maintaining the system did not provide system documentation or consistent answers,” according to a letter prepared by city auditors. “We also identified problems with missing fields, the logic used to create reports for the department, and the department’s reliance on the contractor for system information.”
