Broken 911: The Crisis Facing America's Emergency Dispatchers | Season 2 Premier! Ep 045

➡️ About the Guest: Barry Furey
Join us as we uncover the hidden crisis in America's 911 call centers with Barry Furey, a 50-year veteran of public safety. 

Discover:
- Shocking revelations about understaffing and delayed emergency responses
- The stress and low compensation endured by 911 operators
- How remote technology is changing emergency dispatch
- The complex hierarchy governing 911 operations
- Efforts to reclassify 911 operators as public safety personnel

Learn practical tips for making efficient 911 calls and hear gripping personal stories that highlight the critical nature of emergency response.

- The increasing call volumes and unrecognized role of 911 operators
- New technologies like text-to-911 and future capabilities
- Challenges of high turnover rates, low pay rates and mental health risks

Tune in to understand the people behind the calls and the urgent need for change in our emergency dispatch system.

➡️ Chapters
(00:01) - 911 Emergency Call Centers in Crisis
(10:33) - Importance of 911 Calls and Procedures
(21:40) - Challenges and Rewards of 911 Dispatch
(29:26) - Importance of Quick Emergency Response

➡️ Highlights
(00:01 - 00:23) 911 Emergency System in Jeopardy (22 Seconds)
(02:28 - 03:14) Evolution of Public Safety System (47 Seconds)
(10:18 - 12:18) Remote 911 Operator Technology Implementation (120 Seconds)
(13:45 - 14:55) 911 Operator Classification and Advocacy (70 Seconds)
(18:04 - 19:09) Emergency Call Protocol and Instructions (65 Seconds)
(25:56 - 27:10) Challenges Faced by 911 Dispatchers (74 Seconds)

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Mark: https://www.instagram.com/mark_lubragge_onair/

➡️ More about the guest: Barry Furey
Website: https://barryfurey.com/

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➡️ Thanks for watching:
#911CallCenters, #PublicSafety, #EmergencyResponse, #Understaffing, #RemoteTechnology, #Pandemics, #SevereWeather, #FCC, #LocalAuthorities, #Reclassification, #Text-to-911, #MentalHealth, #PTSD, #QuickResponseTime, #Advocacy, #EmergencyProcedures, #Training, #HighTurnoverRates, #Compensation, #PublicAwareness

Transcript

00:01 - Stacey (Host)
Mark, did you know before you talked to Barry Fury that 9-1-1 is almost about to fail completely? 

00:10 - Mark (Host)
No, I mean, I had no clue. I had. You know, it's the thing that's always there when you need it. You pick up the phone, you dial, you get 9-1-1, what's your emergency? And they take care of it. They dispatch who they need to dispatch. But apparently, well, he himself told a story. He rang for two minutes, two and a half minutes, two and a half minutes to report, you know a problem, a drunk driver, and they eventually called him back, eventually, but two and a half minutes. 

00:32 - Stacey (Host)
He lost the driver. 

00:33 - Mark (Host)
It was too late, right, but it's not the fault of the operator. No, barry paints this picture which he sort of pulls the lid off an average, a typical call center and what's going on with the pay rates and the understaffing and the stress that these people are going through. And he's deservedly so. He's very complimentary of the people that are in those buildings and suffering the way they're suffering. 

00:58 - Stacey (Host)
This guy's a likable dude. This guy is a likable dude Like you want to just jump on his bandwagon, Am I right? Yeah, he's a good guy, I mean you called him grizzled. He's a grizzled veteran and he did not take offense. 

01:11 - Mark (Host)
I felt like he would understand when you go through with him. Look, he was in the call centers for a long time himself and to his point. You know you go from seven minutes of silence to chaos for a very long time. Right, and that's tough to deal with. And you said it's special type of person. 

01:27 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, these are special, special people who take these calls and save lives, and they are not getting paid and this is ridiculous and I'm going to start a movement right now. 

01:35 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, and back to your first question. I had no idea. 

01:38 - Stacey (Host)
Me neither. 

01:39 - Mark (Host)
That's why this is so good to listen to. No, so good to listen to? No idea. Yeah, all right, enjoy it. Barry fury, hi, I'm stacy and I am mark, and this is the gurus at game changers podcast. Everybody, welcome in our guest today. Barry fury spent 50 years in public safety. He was a fire officer. He was a 911 call center director across multiple states. He's done it all. He's seen it all. He's, in fact, has probably some very haunting and horrifying memories. But guess what? That is not what keeps him up at night. What keeps him up at night is his insider knowledge about our 911 call centers nationwide, how they're in a chaotic state and how they are very close to failing. If we were to call now, we would expect to hear 9-1-1, what's your emergency? Well, to Barry Fury, 9-1-1 is the emergency and he's here to tell us why, what needs to happen immediately to fix it and, most importantly, what do we need to do or know for when they don't pick up. Barry, welcome to the show, thanks for joining us. 

02:45 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Thank you for having me, and yeah, I have. As you said, I've been involved in public safety for over 50 years now, and I never thought that 911 itself would be part of the emergency. 

03:00 - Stacey (Host)
Wow, yeah, I mean, I've heard that people are actually calling fire stations directly, police stations directly already. What do you anticipate happening in this scenario? Like what? Like how much time are we looking at? Like, barry, help us. 

03:15 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Yeah Well, I can tell you that personally. A couple of months back I saw what I assumed to be a drunk driver in front of me and I called 911. And the phone rang for two and a half minutes and by that time I had lost sight of the driver and I hung up. The center did call back, as they are required to do on any call that disconnects before they talk to the caller, but at that time the vehicle had been long gone down another roadway. I didn't get mad at the person who called me back. I realized they weren't sitting there listening to the phone ring. They were obviously on other calls. But again, that two and a half minutes could have been somebody's baby at the bottom of a pool. 

04:11 - Stacey (Host)
Sure my gosh. 

04:13 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Now what happens with calling other numbers? It could be a good or it could be a bad thing If you live in an area where you've got a volunteer fire department and you call what I would call the house phone in the firehouse or the social phone, there may or may not be somebody there and you may have wasted again another minute trying to find help where none is coming. But it's not a localized issue. It's something that we're seeing happen all around the United States. 

04:51 - Mark (Host)
So you mentioned technology, but the example you just gave is it a problem of the sheer volume of calls has increased and the current staff can't handle it, or is it a problem of there's not enough staff to handle even the most basic average volume of calls? 

05:08 - Barry Furey (Guest)
The National Emergency Number Association, nena, which is one of the fraternal organizations here in the United States, partnered with a vendor, and they surveyed 911 centers around the country, and they certainly didn't get close to all of them, but they got enough of them to make it a statistically valid sample, and 82% of the centers that they talked to reported that they were understaffed. That's better than eight out of ten. And so what happens is not only do calls wait an inordinate amount of time to be answered, but people who are answering those calls are rushing, they're stressed, they don't get enough breaks. So you know, god bless them. They are working their tails off, but at some point you can only do so much with so many people, and that's the situation that we're in pretty much in every state nationwide. 

06:20 - Mark (Host)
What are the top reasons why they're so understaffed? 

06:25 - Barry Furey (Guest)
The top reasons Money, money and money. To be honest with you right now, the bottom line is that the average salary is about $46,000. But I have run into situations looking at ZipRecruiter. They say that they have some jobs in 911 centers for about $11 an hour and I personally know of some centers that are $9 and change an hour. 

07:01 - Stacey (Host)
I mean UPS drivers are making $200,000 right now. 

07:05 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. So the bottom line is, if you can go and get a job in fast food, work the hours you want to work and not be responsible for holding somebody's life in your hand. Quite frankly, a lot of people are making that choice and we're losing good people from the profession who are, just frankly, burned out with the number of calls they have to answer and also the number of hours that they have to work. Don't forget, somebody has to be there to answer the phone 24-7. And so if you don't have enough full-time employees to do it, what happens is you in many cases, mandatorily overtime your current staff, so that it's not unusual for people to be working 12, 16-hour shifts. I've seen some situations where somebody was on duty for 24 hours in the 911 center and, trust me, I don't care how good they are, how well trained they are, I don't want somebody who hasn't slept in a day handling my emergency. 

08:17 - Stacey (Host)
Sure so, Barry. So what's your skin in this game? Like, how did you come to about all this knowledge and what are you trying to do? 

08:28 - Barry Furey (Guest)
well, I have been involved in public safety in one form or another since high school. I uh became a firefighter while I was still in high school, and I'm third generation. My father and grandfather were both firefighters, but after that I became involved as a 911 dispatcher initially and then as a 911 director in three states actually four states, I'm sorry, 911 director in four states. So I've really seen the service go downhill and it really and truly concerns me Number one. In many cases we are not currently giving people the service that they deserve, and you know I feel free to say that I'm ashamed that they have to, but it's honestly the truth. In many cases people are not getting the service that they deserve. 

09:27 - Mark (Host)
What does that mean, though? Though the service they deserve, what should they be getting? 

09:32 - Barry Furey (Guest)
they are. It means that telephones are ringing longer than would be expected, even under standards. But when, typically when you call 9-1-1, obviously you'd like it to be picked up on the first ring, but two or three rings or even four rings are within reason. But as I indicated to you, when I called to report a hazardous driver, the phone rang for two and a half minutes without anybody answering. So I mean that's number one. People deserve much better service than to have to wait for minutes when they're considerably you know potential to having lives on the line. 

10:18 - Mark (Host)
Do you have to be on site to be a 911 operator? You know, with so many jobs being able to patch into the network and so many people looking for work, or even part-time work. It seems like that problem would be easy to solve. 

10:31 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Well, that's a great question. During the pandemic there were a number of 911 centers who branched out and started to use remote technology to allow people to basically answer 911 calls from their living room. So the technology is there. The acceptance of the technology is not 100% there yet, for a couple of reasons. One is there is a certain degree of security that you want to have on any calls that are going in and out of the 911 center and you can do it at home. But it's not quite as easy when everybody's in one place. And the second thing that you lose is the incidental contact where you are on a call with one person and you hear one of your co-workers on a call with another person and some of what you're hearing ties into the call that you have. So you lose that a little bit when you go remote. 

11:36
But again, during the pandemic there were some 911 centers who were very successful in using, if you want to call it, telework or work at home or or whatever uh to to help out. And it's certainly an upcoming technology to use in case of emergencies, especially if you have a weather emergency hit your area. Typically we have had to call people at home to come in well. If it's a blizzard, if it's a hurricane, if it's a tornado, you want to try to reduce the number of people you're putting on the street. So the technology that you talk about has got some real good potential in the future. But in terms of day-to-day operation, we as an industry have been slow to adopt it who's the person who makes the rules for 9-1-1? 

12:27 - Stacey (Host)
Like, if we want to rise up against what's happening with 9-1-1, who are we supposed to talk to? And do you have a plan, barry? How can we jump on the squad? 

12:38 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Great, that's kind of a multi-level question. 

12:42 - Stacey (Host)
I know sorry. 

13:09 - Barry Furey (Guest)
No, that's great In terms of 911. To begin with, the FCC, or Federal Communications Commission, sets down some of the technical rules, or I should say most of the technical rules. From there on, you have the states who promulgate. So you know, I always say you've got one nation, one number. That's managed in 6,000 different ways. 

13:18
Wow. But the bottom line and the best way to rise up to this is to find the non-emergency number for your local 911 center and ask them who to contact. It is typically your senator or representative in the region. So I mean, if you know who your congressmen are, your representatives, and those are the people who actually will make a difference. 

13:45
Because right now, on the federal level, there is an effort to reclassify the position of 911 operator to fall in line with public safety. Right now it falls in line with secretary and clerical personnel. So that's a big sticking point in that you find, for example, not to pick on anybody, but school crossing guards are classified by the federal government as being public safety. 911 dispatchers are classified as clerical workers. So that's one of the things that folks are trying to change. And the other thing is to call your local mayor, whoever runs your local government, who would be in charge of the 911 center, and express your concern to them. Because, regardless of what the federal government does with classification, the dollars and cents and the urgency to get something done rest with the local government agencies. 

14:55 - Stacey (Host)
Wow, it's like a life-saving thing that they're just sort of pushing off. 

14:59 - Mark (Host)
Yeah clerical. 

15:00 - Stacey (Host)
This is nuts. So when you were working as dispatch, you were dispatch manager, right, you were of a few centers. What happened if someone called and it was fake? Because I read that there were fake 911 calls from survivors of the Baltimore Bridge that collapsed and that kind of held up the whole system for the real calls and people actually thought that they were survivors. 

15:23 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, the bottom line is that you have to treat every call as if it's real, because you don't want to wind up with a situation where you don't send somebody and find out that somebody needs help. And I'll give you a perfect example. 

15:49 - Mark (Host)
Hey guys, thanks for listening. If you like what you're hearing, please leave us a review, give us a follow, subscribe, all those things. We love it because we read each and every comment and it helps shape the show, so we would appreciate it. 

16:02 - Stacey (Host)
Please, and back to the show. 

16:05 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Back in the day, when I was still answering telephones and dispatching units. Years ago, it was working night shift and I got a call from a kid who sounded to be maybe 10 years old and was as calm as the day is long, reporting a house on fire down the street. Oh yeah, there are flames coming out of every window and there's smoke, and I'm thinking I'd love to get my hands on you. Where are your parents? It's 2 o'clock in the morning. You're up doing this. I hung up with him and I was preparing to dispatch to the department. The fire phone rang again and it was this an adult screaming her head off about the same call, and the kid was like he did this every day for a living did come and this adult woman was, you know, through the roof and, oh my God. So that's the thing you just can't tell. You always have to assume that the caller is telling the truth because you're not on the scene to verify whether they are or not. Right? 

17:18 - Mark (Host)
how you guys don't, don't fake a 911 call right, don't please don't do that don't call for frivolous reasons oh my god, hear those stories all the time too is what can you tell people? Help the public right. How should they call 9-1-1 like what should they do to make the dispatcher's job faster and easier? 

17:41 - Barry Furey (Guest)
good question number one you know, make sure it is a true emergency. Now I'm not going to go through the definition here, and if you think it's a true emergency, you go ahead. But what I'm saying is it's not that your washing machine is overflowing. You'd be surprised how many calls we get like that. Second of all, when it is a real emergency, know what the problem is, stay calm. Know what the problem is, stay calm. Make sure you give the operator your correct address, your, your phone number. 

18:20
If you are out on a highway somewhere, try to give the best location. Maybe you can see a mile marker, maybe you can see a business, maybe you know hey, I just passed exit six. All those things help. Stay calm and be ready to answer questions and don't hang up until you're told to. Many centers provide free arrival instructions, especially in the case of medical emergencies. So while you're on the phone, they are going to be giving you first aid or CPR instructions. So try to stay on the phone and follow them to the best of your ability. Just call, have the right information, stay calm and listen to what you're told. 

19:11 - Stacey (Host)
In same vein, like for people. What happens if you, if no one answers? What do you do if you're on the phone and no one's answering? Is there another alternate thing to do? Do you just keep calling back like what's? 

19:23 - Barry Furey (Guest)
now? Uh well, first of all, if you call 9-1-1 and nobody answers right away, do not hang up. That is the absolute worst thing you can do, unless you're calling from inside your house and your house is on fire, then you know. First of all, you should never call from inside your house if it's on fire, regardless, unless you have to get out. But when you call 9-1-1 and hang up if they haven't answered because they're busy, your next call automatically goes to the back of the queue. So if there were 20 calls ahead of you when you hung up, you know maybe now there's 40 calls ahead of you when you called back. So, whatever you do, please do not hang up unless your life is in danger and you've got to get out of where you're at. 

20:12
But, just hang on, that's the answer. 

20:14 - Mark (Host)
That's really good advice. Exactly Let it ring, ring ring. 

20:16 - Stacey (Host)
Unless your life is in danger. You've got to get out of where you're at. 

20:19 - Mark (Host)
But just hang on, that's the answer. Right, that's really good advice. Let it ring, ring, ring. 

20:21 - Stacey (Host)
Someone's going to eventually answer Wow, yeah, yeah, that's awesome, do you? I'm sure you had situations where you saved lives and I really want people to understand how important 911 is, you know, because I feel like it's so easy for kids to remember 911. You know, I'm sure a ton of kids call you know, my mom is hurt, my dad is hurt, and it's just easy to remember that. Could you tell us a story where you really impacted someone? 

20:43 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Oh well, one of the things that I did several centers back and carried it over was a program called I Knew what to Do, which honored kids who called 911 as a positive effect, and we would give them a plaque, we'd go to their school, we'd buy ice cream for their class or whatever. But I mean I can tell you any number of times that children called for their parents who wouldn't wake up because they were having some sort of a seizure or fell down the stairs. We even had one situation where somebody called and his parent wound up dying and we typically did not award in those situations because they're really kind of emotional. But this child was just so special. He was nine years old and I mean he handled it better than most adults we have seen. So we did honor him. 

21:40 - Stacey (Host)
I have another question because I just recently heard a story where a woman could not say what was happening to her because her attacker was nearby. She managed to get on her phone, call 911, and the 911 operator was basically a hero and talked her through and found and got the fire department and brought them to the site. Have you witnessed stuff like that happening and what should someone do in that scenario? 

22:04 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Most 911 centers now accept text to 911. And there have been a number of situations where people were hiding in a closet or somehow otherwise concealed in a building where there were burglars or somebody committing some other type of crime where they have been able to hide in the closet, didn't have to speak so they couldn't be heard and were just typing in the information about what was going on outside. 

22:36 - Stacey (Host)
I never knew that. Did you know that? Yeah? 

22:37 - Barry Furey (Guest)
And in the future, and again, like I said, there's a lot of changes going on now. With the technology, in the future you'll actually be able to send pictures and video to 911 as well, so you'll be able to live stream video of an incident to 9-1-1. 

22:54 - Mark (Host)
Wow, that's a great idea. You know, let's talk about the young guys and girls that are that are coming into this career. What difference do you see in them? That? Um, positive and negative. For the newer, the newer additions to this career path additions to this career path. 

23:13 - Barry Furey (Guest)
You know I can't say much negative about anybody who's willing to handle the call load that they are having to handle these days. 

23:21
It's gone up every year I've been in this business. Anybody who wants to put up with that is is is more than welcome. I think the tough thing is I think it gets tougher and tougher to find a really good telecommunicator. Secondarily, it takes you at least six months to get somebody primed they can kind of handle, handle things with somebody looking over their shoulder and probably close to two years to get to somebody where they're really really comfortable at what they're doing and have heard most of what they're going to hear. So they feel, oh yeah, I've heard that before, I know what to do. So the tough part right now is, you know, finding people who are willing to stay the course on that. We see tremendous turnover industry-wide of people who are still on probation and who say you know, this isn't for me, this isn't what I signed up for, this isn't for me, this isn't what I signed up for, this isn't for me. The the job is too hard, there's too much stress, the hours are too long so you need to raise the raise the salary. 

24:43 - Stacey (Host)
You need to make sure the benefits are good. You need what's the culture like? 

24:47 - Barry Furey (Guest)
it's not to say that it doesn't get quiet, but you have periods of quiet that are followed by periods of seemingly never-ending dread. It can go for everything is going along smooth, and then I can lean back a little bit and then there's a 38-car pileup out on the freeway little bit and then there's a 38 car pileup out on the freeway and the phone doesn't stop ringing for seven minutes because everybody's calling at once, because everybody's got a cell phone, and then people who, driven by the accident, get sort of this buyer's remorse ten miles down the road. Oh yeah, maybe I should have called that in. So you you get periods where you will literally get hundreds of calls on the same incident and the stress is not only from the number of calls but from the fact that you have to answer every one of those hundred calls and make sure that one out of that hundred is not calling about something else. 

25:56 - Stacey (Host)
It's a special, special person who takes this job. 

25:59 - Barry Furey (Guest)
It really, really does and they're out there and really all I'm trying to do is to get number one, to spread the word and get the knowledge to the public out there of what the situation is, and number two, to improve the lot. And it may be baby steps, but anything that can be done to slow down the turnover and increase the numbers is a benefit to everybody, because part of the cost of running a 911 center these days is constantly training and retraining. You know, you can't sit back and say, well, okay, we had a big rookie academy and we're, we're caught up. Now we can worry about in-house, in-service training. 

26:47 - Mark (Host)
It doesn't happen, it does not happen you, based on what you just described as the periods of quiet followed by periods of significant stress. There has to be like a PTSD connection here, right, oh, very, very much, much so. 

27:05 - Barry Furey (Guest)
90% of the agencies that were talked to as part of that study provided counseling service. I not an alarmist, I am not chicken little, I am not running to say that the sky is falling. I'm telling you that, someone who has had over half a century experience in emergency services, that our 911 system now is in serious problems, that our 911 system now is in serious problems because of lack of personnel. I would say to folks who work in those 911 centers keep up the good work, go out there, outreach, network with your partners and have your voice heard on the current national outreach to try to improve your situation. 

27:59 - Stacey (Host)
Got it. I love that. 

27:59 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Very straightforward. So how can we help you? Well, how you can help me is, again, talk to your friends, let them, you know, get this podcast up and out there and online and have people watch it. You can actually have people contact me directly, if they'd like, at my email, which is BarryFury at Yahoocom, and it's all one word, barryfury at Yahoocom, as simple as you can make it, and I'll be happy to answer any questions. Or, you know, do any, follow us. But you know anything that you can do through your, your social media outreach and also through your family and friends. Just make them aware of what the problem is and you know you'll be surprised. If you snoop around online, even even in places like Nextdoor et cetera, reddit out there, you're going to see people sharing 911 nightmare stories and you see it more and more, and that's unfortunate. 

29:05 - Mark (Host)
And you have a website right, BarryFurycom. I have a website too. 

29:08 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Barryfurycom the website. Yes, sir. 

29:10 - Stacey (Host)
Awesome Wow. 

29:13 - Mark (Host)
I thank you for speaking so highly of the people that are working so hard in there now, thank you. 

29:18 - Stacey (Host)
We certainly want to thank them as well. Thank you for what you're doing. 

29:21 - Mark (Host)
It's not thought about. It's one of those jobs that people don't think about until you need to think about it. 

29:26 - Barry Furey (Guest)
Right, and nobody thinks they're going to have an emergency Right. Everybody wakes up and the first thing you think about it rightfully so is oh, I'm going to have an emergency today? Well, no, and you know, luckily you don't normally, but when you do, that's not the only emergency. The other emergency is how quick are you going to get help? Because how quickly can 911 answer your call? 

29:52 - Mark (Host)
Awesome. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. You are welcome wonderful thank you, thank you thank you. 

30:04 - Stacey (Host)
You're still here. You're still listening. Thanks for listening to the gurus and game changers podcast while you're here. If you enjoyed it, please take a minute to rate this episode and leave us a quick review. We want to know what you thought of the show and what you took from it and how it might have helped you. We read and appreciate every comment. Thanks, see you next week.