Edmonton’s 911 civilian call takers and dispatchers are fielding a significant number of calls that aren’t actually emergencies. That’s according to data from a Thursday meeting with the Edmonton Police Commission.
“Over 30 per cent of the calls that we receive on 911 are not transferred to another emergency service,” said Kalie Anderson, director of Emergency Communications and Operations Management Branch (ECOMB).
Civilian emergency communications officers received 1.1 million calls in 2023, and this year, they are on track to meet or surpass that number with 450,000 calls received so far.
Officers are comprised of civilian call takers and dispatchers.
911 handles calls for Edmonton Police Service, Edmonton Fire Rescue Services and Emergency Medical Services.
“This work is regulated under the Alberta 911 standards, which sets out very strict regulations that we must follow along with all other centres within the province,” said Anderson.
“We are required to answer 95 per cent of 911 calls within 15 seconds, and we must transfer those calls within 60 seconds.”
Anderson said calls not transferred to emergency services often include accidents or people who want non-emergency matters addressed.
“We received calls for toilets overflowing, people upset about the service they’ve received in a restaurant, and any number of other issues that people might have, but they don’t know where to ask for help,” Anderson said.
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Communications officers also have to contend with 8.7 per cent of calls leading to people hanging up.
“These are generally calls from a cell phone where a member of the public has accidentally activated their SOS feature on their cell phone,” Anderson said.
“People often panic and hang up the phone, but unfortunately, we do need to call back every single one of those callers to make sure that there isn’t an emergency.”
That meant having to respond to over 60,000 calls in 2023, Anderson said.
“We had to call back someone to ensure that there was no emergency, which is a significant amount of work for our call takers,” Anderson said.
The situation is concerning enough for officials to launch a public awareness campaign on Monday to ensure people “make the right call” and understand when it is appropriate to call 911.
The breakdown of calls referred to other agencies by emergency communications officers includes 33 per cent to EPS, 22 per cent to EMS for an ambulance to attend a medical emergency and four per cent to fire services for a fire truck to respond.
Communications officers also divert hundreds of thousands of calls each year to agencies like 311 for city bylaw matters, 211 for crisis, community and social services, 988 for the newly established national mental health crisis hotline and 811 for general health information for Albertans.
EPS Deputy Chief Warren Driechel said during the commission meeting that EPS works in tandem with ECOMB to track the demands of large-scale events and the increase in call volume during those times.
“From a major event perspective, ECOMB is actively included in all the planning ahead of time, so as those operational plans are built up, to try to anticipate what that surge and surge capacity might need to be,” Driechel said.