Cellphones Drive Jump in 911 Use

Workloads and Costs Soar With Increased Calls and Translation Needs

Widespread cellphone use and the need for time-consuming language translation have caused workloads and costs to jump for emergency 911 dispatch centers across the nation at a time when the economic downturn is pinching tax receipts and local and state governments are looking for ways to trim spending.

The trend is evident across the country and is particularly acute in the Washington area, where dozens of cellphone users have called to report a single accident on the Capital Beltway and where an ethnically diverse population requires dispatch centers to translate as many as 60 languages in a year.

"Commonly we see one single accident can generate 100 calls, and that's not an exaggeration," said Steve Souder, director of the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety Communications. "Everybody's calling. And those calls have to be fielded. Each one has to be queried so that it is confirmed. We just can't blow them off or treat any one less intensely than the one before."

Fairfax, the region's largest jurisdiction with almost 1.1 million people, is a case in point. Heavy traffic at the Springfield interchange, on Interstate 395, in Tysons Corner and along other major thoroughfares have helped fuel a jump in 911 calls from motorists who can now report a fender bender from behind the wheel rather than pull off the highway and find a pay phone.

Since 2000, annual wireless 911 calls in Fairfax have risen from 180,000 to 268,000, an almost 50 percent increase. That, in turn, has prompted the county to increase the call center staff from 154 to 204 and to increase local spending on 911 services from almost $2 million to more than $10 million (in Virginia, 911 services are funded in part with telephone tax receipts collected by the state). The program is still understaffed, however, so the county also pays police and fire officers overtime -- with far higher base salaries than full-time dispatchers -- to moonlight at the call center.

"It's a terrific incentive to get bodies when you need them, but it's not very efficient," Souder said.

Call volumes are up across the nation, with widespread cellphone use to report emergencies causing 911 calling to jump from 150 million calls in 2000 to 240 million last year, according to the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials. In Loudoun County, 911 calls rose from 69,000 in 2000 to 98,000 in 2006. In the District, steadily increasing wireless calls have caused total volume to rise from 819,000 in 2004 to 1.3 million last year, officials said.

Montgomery County, almost as large as Fairfax, bucked the national trend and reported relatively even call volume in recent years. The county's volume of cellular calls has risen, but land line calls have decreased proportionally, officials there said.

Demand for language translation also is increasing pressure on emergency dispatch centers. For years, governments have relied on a private company that dispatchers can call to find translators of dozens of languages. But use of the service has jumped dramatically this decade with growing diversity. In Fairfax, dispatchers fielded more than 17,000 calls in foreign languages last year, requiring interpretation of 66 different languages. All told, dispatchers spent 2,159 hours on such calls, compared with 384 hours in 1997.

In September alone, dispatchers listened to translations of Amharic, Arabic, Bulgarian, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Somali, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu and Vietnamese. In addition, they fielded 1,100 calls in Spanish.

The usage is noteworthy, officials said, because foreign language calls are time-consuming and have contributed to an increase in the average call duration in Fairfax from 79 seconds to 114. That, in turn, requires more staffing and more money, Souder said.

"They're able to interpret, gosh, I forget how many hundreds of languages," said Richard Taylor, president of the National Association of State 911 Administrators and the head of North Carolina's 911 coordinating office. "And that takes time." Taylor added that translation demands are up across the country.

"Fairfax County 911. What is your emergency?" Ben Andrews, 47, a county dispatcher, said into his headset on a recent weekday evening.

"Please, Spanish," the caller replied. Andrews pushed a key on his computer keyboard and after about a minute was connected to a translator.

"Please ask him what is the emergency and where is the emergency," Andrews said to the translator after identifying himself, giving an identification code and stating the language he needed translated. Andrews listened to the translation and the response, which detailed a domestic situation in an apartment near Seven Corners. "Are there drugs and alcohol present?" He listened to the translation, the response, the translation. "Are there any weapons?" He waited. "An officer will be there shortly."

Souder recently presented the county Board of Supervisors with a list of cuts amounting to 15 percent of the department's $12.7 million budget, an exercise that all county agencies have been required to do in the face of a $500 million spending shortfall. Souder told supervisors that because 911 is a core government function, the only way to save that much money would be to cut 17 positions.

It is not an option that supervisors will consider, and Souder hired 19 dispatchers this month who will be ready to field calls after four or five months of training. But the exercise illuminates one more area of local government where supervisors won't be able to find much savings -- and renders the task of finding areas where they will that much harder.

"There's no way I would jeopardize public safety or diminish our ability to respond to public safety incidents," said Supervisor Sharon S. Bulova (D-Braddock), who is chairman of the board's budget committee. "That's not to say we can't find savings and efficiencies, and those will add up. We'll do the best we can."