Crisis Line in Crisis: BC’s 911 Service

DAVE WILSON

E-Comm is a 911 service and dispatching organization in British Columbia. When someone calls 911 during an emergency, they are directed by the E-Comm dispatchers to aids such as the fire department, police station, or ambulance. This is the phone line hundreds of thousands of British Columbians call when they’re stuck in fatal situations. 

The E-Comm union stated that the 911 emergency service is currently facing an extreme staffing shortage and is not prepared to be the frontline force that handles major emergencies. People who phone E-Comm dispatchers should be in contact with them in five seconds or less for a 911 call, 10 seconds or less when requesting police, and 3 minutes or less when requesting staff other than the police. Due to the current staffing shortage, these listed wait-times when phoning for help have extended to 20 minutes for emergency requests and a mind-blowing 5 hours for non-emergency requests. 

During British Columbia’s “heat dome” between June 25 and July 1, temperatures exceeded 40 °C, which challenged B.C.’s medical system and caused the deaths of over 500 British Columbians. The wait-time for emergency ambulances when phoning 911 during the heat dome surpassed an hour and a half, and answering dispatchers and paramedics said that they had over 200 pending calls daily. 

 E-Comm dispatcher Carrie James recalled, “people don’t get into this job to sit there and listen to people in distress. When you’re sitting on the phone for 10, 15, even 20, minutes waiting to transfer someone through to the ambulance service and unable to provide any type of support whatsoever other than to say, ‘I’m still on the phone with you,’ when you can’t give them advice, you can’t reassure them an ambulance is coming – it’s very difficult. It’s very demoralizing.” She also said that the stress of her profession begins before showing up to the office, since E-Comm requires people to work more than their scheduled 12-hour shift: “It’s gotten to the point where instead of it being occasional or periodic where people are being overrun and overworked, it’s very consistent. I know so many people that are actively looking for [other] work.”

Other 911 dispatchers reported that they are relying on working overtime and missing breaks to meet service level. The service level for 911 facilities recommends that 125 “full-time call” staff are to be hired in addition to the 153 already employed.

Oliver Grüter-Andrew, E-Comm CEO, has confirmed that the service has been under panic for months: “We came to the internal conclusion that as a part of the problem we do not have enough funded seats to meet the current service targets in answering police non-emergency calls. I worry a lot about our staff at E-Comm. I worry about staff at other emergency communication centres, police, fire, and ambulance. The right thing to do is look at the system of emergency communication in British Columbia end-to-end and redesign and resource the system appropriately to deal with that for the sake of public safety.”

Grüter-Andrew had also made it clear that these shortages are extreme threats to public safety as they have “a chain of cause” in the first responding system. “[Staff] are crying before their shifts, they’re crying after their shifts. I know there’s this extreme burden to work overtime as a regular shift is 12 hours long. It simply couldn’t be further from the truth that we are adequately staffed,” he revealed.

Furthermore, the E-Comm service is underfunded. Grüter-Andrew mentioned that the calls and complicated police reports that dispatchers take have increased. The municipalities that contract E-Comm to handle these situations do not have the proper funding to do so. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a multinational network of firms, wrote that “although funding is available [for E-Comm], ability to recruit and retain is challenged, resulting in significantly understaffed dispatch.” Thus, the overtime cost of $2 million is the equivalent of 22 full-time call dispatchers. 

E-Comm currently has 259 call-takers and dispatchers in British Columbia, but it unfortunately still has empty seats for 70 more dispatchers. When someone calls 911, they expect instant support, waiting at most three minutes for help to arrive, not waiting hours on the phone until it is too late. Along with the people in need, the dispatchers are anxious and nervous. 

Overall, dispatches are extremely tired due to constant overworking and stress. E-Comm is under-funded, understaffed, and overworked. BC’s emergency coordinator desperately needs more recruits, and is currently taking in as many suitable workers as possible.