ST. LOUIS 鈥 狐狸视频 and 狐狸视频 County officials on Wednesday defended their responses to weekend incidents where people reported long delays with 911 as they sought help for a woman in The Grove and a child in Jennings hit and killed by falling trees.
The officials said they are still investigating the incidents, and expressed regret for the deaths. But they said the city and county 911 centers were overwhelmed by calls when storms hit Saturday, toppling trees, knocking out power lines and seeding minor flash flooding across the region.
狐狸视频 Public Safety Director Charles Coyle said the city got more than 1,000 calls in an hour, or more than nine per minute.
鈥淭hat was too many calls for us to think that we could handle each one of them,鈥 he said.
It was the same story in 狐狸视频 County. 鈥淭he system was completely overwhelmed,鈥 said Doug Moore, a spokesman for County Executive Sam Page.
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The responses followed outcries on both sides of the county line from people who said they called 911 over and over without result after a tree fell on 33-year-old Katherine Coen鈥檚 car near The Grove entertainment district and another fell on 5-year-old Robert 鈥淩J鈥 Lawrence at his house in Jennings.
In the city, people saying they tried for more than an hour to get someone on the emergency line renewed longstanding concern about the system, which has struggled for years to pick up many calls in a manner consistent with national standards.
The incident raised questions about years-old promises to fix the system.
In the past three years, city officials, including Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, have offered pay raises, fixed system glitches and announced plans to tackle the longstanding separation of 911 centers for police and for 狐狸视频 fire and emergency medical services, which they said created bottlenecks for a system where all calls are initially routed to police.
Still, by the start of this year, numbers hadn鈥檛 improved much: More than a third of calls weren鈥檛 being answered nearly quickly enough to meet the national standards. About a third of police dispatcher positions were vacant as of this spring; half of EMS positions, too.
But at a press conference Wednesday, Coyle separated Saturday鈥檚 incident from those issues, casting it as a unique consequence of a 鈥渞egional weather catastrophe.鈥
He also insisted the city is making progress on a long-term fix. He said another round of raises just took effect:聽Starting salaries for EMS dispatchers, for instance, are up to $47,008 from $32,240, according to Personnel Department materials.聽
Calls are still being routed through the police 911 center, a setup that has long required an extra step when callers need fire or EMS services. But Coyle said the department now has software in place that kicks in when an operator is not immediately available and asks callers to push buttons for EMS or fire services if they need them.
He said the department has also gathered about three-quarters of the money it needs to build a new dispatch center where officials envision dispatchers will take calls as one unit, sometime in 2026. And he said there are plans to build a day care center for children of first responders, including dispatchers, in an effort to improve hiring and retention.
A city spokesman later said in an emailed statement that dispatchers did answer calls about the incident. A dispatcher for emergency medical service picked one up as early as 3:57 p.m., about 20 minutes after Sebastian Montes, a restaurant owner in the Grove, said people around him started calling 911 on Saturday.
A police dispatcher answered a call at 4:14 p.m., the statement said. And a fire service dispatcher answered a call at 4:16 p.m. Firefighters, stretched thin by the storm, were on scene 13 minutes later.
The statement did not say whether the earliest call to the EMS dispatcher prompted any response from paramedics or other first responders. City spokesman Nick Desideri said that is still under review.
A spokeswoman for Lawrence鈥檚 family said Monday that it took his mother 45 minutes to get ahold of emergency services after a tree came crashing through her home, and that her son was alive when she first started to try.
She said was repeatedly disconnected after being told her call would be transferred, and that a friend eventually drove to a police station herself to ask for help.
But on Wednesday, county police said the first call did get through, and was transferred to the county by St. Ann dispatchers at 3:42 p.m. It was not clear how long the call was waiting in St. Ann, though a county official said they have asked.
A police spokesman said when the call came to the county, it rang for 13 minutes. When a dispatcher answered, the caller hung up, so the dispatcher called back, got an answer and spoke to a woman for three minutes and 20 seconds. During that time, a Jennings police officer also called out over the radio about the incident.
狐狸视频 County police arrived on scene between 3:53 p.m. and 3:55 p.m., the spokesman said.
On Wednesday, the county it received more than 600 calls from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. that day, or more than three times the normal volume.
鈥淢y heart goes out to RJ鈥檚 mom and his entire family,鈥 Page, the county executive, said in a statement. 鈥淭he storm created a terrible situation. I spoke to the chief today and the Police Department is reviewing its system to determine what improvements may be needed.鈥