Update on city emergency response times for fire & medical
File photo: Shortly before midnight, Ocala Fire Rescue, Ocala Police Department, and Marion County Fire Rescue responded to a fire at a home adjacent to Lamb Park. Multiple ambulances were observed leaving the scene. Three Ocala Police Department officers were treated for smoke inhalation because they were on scene first. Oct. 24, 2024. [Ocala Gazette]
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After posing questions about response times in the city to fire/medical calls earlier this year, the “Gazette” can report some progress.
We’ve ascertained the city hiccups can be attributed primarily to three things: fire/medical dispatch that could be more efficient, slower than expected en route times from Ocala Fire Rescue, and dysfunctional communication between city and county.
The “Gazette” noticed holes in emergency communications between the city and county and, in a series of reports this year, encouraged city leadership to visit the county’s 911 center, where there was better organizational structure and better technology tailored explicitly for fire/medical calls that the city did not have.
Earlier this year, the “Gazette” reported that Marion County Fire Rescue dispatchers wait until the city dispatchers—who are in a different location–share details from an emergency call for help. This delay negatively impacted response times and invited human error.
Ocala Mayor Ben Marciano and Councilmembers James Hilty and Barry Mansfield heard our concerns and went to both call centers to observe, just as the “Gazette” reporters had done.
Mansfield and Hilty spoke highly of the professionalism they observed from 911 call takers and dispatchers at both centers.
Over the past few months, the city implemented a new interface between its CAD system and the county’s so the county’s dispatchers could see the city’s calls automatically without having to share them one by one. Both Mansfield and Hilty expressed hope that the interface would make things work more smoothly between the city and county’s fire departments.
We have noticed some improvement from this measure. However, there is still more to fix for the city to meet the county’s superior fire/medical dispatch level.
A little history on how we got in this predicament
In 2020, the Ocala City Council broke away from its arrangement with Marion County to share the dispatching of fire and medical emergency units. This decision went against not only the recommendations of a consultant they hired to explore the local emergency communication infrastructure but also against national recommendations that emergency communications should be consolidated regionally and work from a common computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.
An Oct. 8, 2019, workshop gives a glimpse into what the city leaders’ mindset was when they chose to deconsolidate fire and medical dispatch from the county. Then-Mayor Kent Guinn told city council, “You’re going to be inundated with requests by the county commission, you know, to meet, talk, change your mind, have a workshop, and on and on and on. So, you know, I would just tell you to mean what you say, say what you mean. And you know, stick to your guns…stay with it.”
Guinn was correct in that the county asked the city to work with them to correct the concerns based on the consultant’s report just one month earlier but to no avail. During that same workshop, Ocala Fire Rescue Chief Shane Alexander noted improvements since the county’s 911 call center came under county Fire Chief James Banta’s supervision, but he voiced expectations that having Ocala Police Department dispatch OFR units would improve response times within the city.
Fast forward to 2024, and that doesn’t seem to have happened.
OPD dispatching OFR has led to a number of public safety concerns, including delayed response times while dispatchers flip through a pdf for the dispatch matrix information, OFR units occasionally not informing dispatchers when they are unavailable, and reports of some OFR units slow-walking their responses to calls because they know Marion County Fire Rescue units will be responding as well.
By contrast, Marion County officials followed the 2019 consultant’s recommendations and the county department has achieved significant improvements in dispatch efficiencies and call center organizational structure.
Ocala residents have seen some benefit from the county’s decision because MCFR provides ambulance services for the entire county, including within the city limits. In practical terms, this means is that every vehicular accident involving an injury, every person requiring medical help in their home, every structure fire that could result in an injury requires an MCFR response.
When the city decided to deconsolidate from the county’s dispatch system, then-OPD Chief Greg Graham told city council to expect “within the year” a significant budget request to enable all local public safety agencies to be on the same CAD system.
A short time later, Graham died unexpectedly. While OPD took over dispatching city fire and medical units, the system changes he spoke of never came to fruition.
Although OPD Chief Michael Balken did not agree with his predecessor, Graham, that public safety would be better served by using the same CAD system so information could be shared more easily between the different agencies, Balken has addressed this concern by getting a CAD interface put in place that shares city call information for fire/medical automatically with MCFR.
However, the fire/medical dispatch software for the city remains antiquated compared to the county’s.
Dispatch technology matters when every second counts
Notably, the county’s dispatch system has more automation, which makes it faster and more nimble. Based on the nature of the call transferred by the 911 call taker to the dispatcher, the closest units and recommended responsive apparatus are suggested automatically to the dispatcher to edit or approve. When the “Gazette” observed this process, assigning units never took more than 20 seconds in the county and often took approximately 13 seconds.
At the OPD call center, a dispatcher would receive the call in a similar fashion to the county. However, the dispatcher must then scroll through a nine-page pdf computer file that contains OFR’s dispatch matrix before determining which closest units to dispatch given the nature of the emergency. The dispatcher then notifies their county counterpart to send an MCFR ambulance and identify the closest OFR units to the scene.
In response to repeated requests from the “Gazette” for city officials to observe the county’s fire dispatch center and compare it to Ocala’s system, OFR Chief Clint Welborn said he would coordinate with MCFR Chief James Banta to watch the county’s fire dispatchers in action.
We believe this is the first time the OFR chief will observe the county’s fire dispatch system.
Ocala Fire Rescue promises better accountability for enroute times
After studying service calls throughout the year, the “Gazette” noticed that OFR’s incident reports did not include seconds or enroute times. This starkly contrasts with how MCFR compiles its incident reports and raises questions including how the agency can hold its personnel accountable if it is not routinely collecting and analyzing response time data.
Sources and personal observation on emergency calls revealed OFR units at times responding slowly because they knew they could be canceled as soon as MCFR indicated it has an ambulance en route.
Fire departments are different from law enforcement agencies in that they have nationally recommended response times. Fire departments are expected to have units enroute within 60 seconds if they are not on another call.
The “Gazette” also noticed a possible disconnect between OFR and the fire dispatchers employed by OPD at the city’s call center. In an internal affairs report by OPD into the Feb. 20 fiery crash on Southeast 36th Avenue that left an Ocala couple dead, the fire dispatcher reported to the investigator that sometimes OFR units get “mad” and “question whether they are the closest unit” and sometimes don’t communicate to the dispatcher when they are enroute.
While observing city dispatch for over 12 hours, the “Gazette” also noticed OFR units leaving their station for unknown activities without notifying the dispatcher that they weren’t available or telling the dispatcher to send another closer unit. These observations lend credence to the narrative of the dispatcher quoted in OPD’s internal investigation.
City Manager Pete Lee, who oversees OFR, said he has not been regularly receiving reports analyzing overall response times. The “Gazette” asked how he can ascertain the fire department’s effectiveness without receiving detailed response time information from OFR. Lee indicated he has the highest confidence in the chief and that they speak about operations regularly.
According to OFR’s Welborn, who took over the department in 2021, the department does not systematically review response data in formal reports. Instead, he said, the department looks at certain specific incidents if there is a concern.
The agency collects the call data in a program separate from the CAD and incident reports and can provide a sampling of it. However, Wellborn indicated he did not have someone on staff to analyze the data regularly for the purpose of preparing formal reports on response times.
Welborn agreed that formal reports on response times would benefit the department and hoped to eventually have the type of dashboard the county was rolling out at the end of the year that gives leadership real-time data on responses.
A city spokesperson indicated that the department would send notifications to shifts who were not meeting expectations for enroute times. The “Gazette” will be requesting those reports.
Ideal measures and why they matter
You don’t need to be a medical professional to grasp that life and death can hinge on how quickly someone gets medical help following an injury or medical episode. That’s why it’s in the public’s best interest to demand that the city and county work together proactively to achieve every efficiency possible.
Additionally, the city’s position impacts those outside the city limits who might need to rely on an OFR unit for a fire call or if their cardiac emergency call gets routed to the city’s call center and there is a glitch in the city requesting an ambulance response from MCFR.
OFR runs significantly fewer calls than MCFR because the agency covers a much smaller territory. OFR units, however, can be called upon to provide fire suppression to county residents when they are closer to the call address than an MCFR unit. This often happens, so the agencies keep track and the county reimburses the city for providing this assistance.
The numbers tell a significant story. Records from the first quarter of 2024 show that MCFR responded to as many calls, if not more, within Ocala than the city’s own fire department-while relying on the city’s less sophisticated emergency call center.
The goal of state and national emergency response experts in emergency communications is to eliminate any hesitation or delay, which is why they advocate for agencies to consolidate their efforts.
Banta, who oversees ambulance services for the entire county, continues to maintain the position he took in 2019 when the city deconsolidated, “The county and city would be best served by consolidated 911 and everyone working from the same CAD system.”
The “Gazette” urges Ocala leaders to return to having OFR dispatched under the county’s superior CAD system to improve efficiency. Even better would be for the local public safety agencies to consolidate 911 call-taking and dispatch regionally while collectively choosing the best CAD system that works for all of them as recommended by the consultants hired by the city and county and agreed upon by every chief over our local public safety agencies when they chose to deconsolidate city fire and medical dispatch.
Siloed local public safety agencies are impacting response times. The sooner they come together, the better for the public. Lives truly are at stake.
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Prior reporting: Marion County continues to get bad health grades. But who is at the helm to fix? | Ocala Gazette
Siloed agencies pose unnecessary challenges to improving public safety levels | Ocala Gazette
Can emergency personnel locate me through my cellphone? | Ocala Gazette
Providing quality observations to the community takes a lot of time and work | Ocala Gazette
The “first” of the first responders | Ocala Gazette
City of Ocala emergency dispatch continues to struggle | Ocala Gazette
Fatal crash leaves questions about City emergency communications | Ocala Gazette
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