Lancaster residents concerned about slow response to emergency calls (Lancaster Watchdog) | Local News

Reader Matthew Sweeney, who lives in the city of Lancaster, wrote to The Watchdog in November about two incidents in which he witnessed what he said was an extremely slow response to emergency calls.

He described one call as a domestic dispute that began around midday when two men were yelling in public. They had to be held back by other people. After about 10 minutes passed with no police response, someone called the police again.

Sweeney estimated it took police 20 minutes to respond and bring the situation under control. Emergency medical personnel also arrived to treat two people for a head injury and a hand injury.

The second situation involved a two-vehicle collision around 1:30 a.m., with airbags deploying and people arguing. Sweeney said he and his wife called 911 and received no response after about 20 minutes. When they called again, the dispatcher told them that all officers had high priority calls.

“Due to these two incidents, I am concerned about the overall response time of law enforcement,” Sweeney wrote.

While The Watchdog was unable to obtain precise information on police response times, it did investigate and learn some details about the dispatch of emergency services.

Calls are routed by Lancaster County-Wide Communications, the county’s dispatch center. In 2023, LCWC handled 245,184 calls to 911, resulting in 449,303 dispatches, broken down as follows: emergency medical services: 25,481; fire, 94,413; and police, 329,409.

(For comparison, approximately 560,000 people live in Lancaster County.)

According to Brian Pasquale, director of the county’s Department of Public Safety, dispatchers follow standards approved by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and consistent with guidelines from national telecommunications organizations when responding to calls.

“We require that at least 90 percent of calls be answered within the first 15 seconds and 95 percent within the first 20 seconds to ensure minimal response times on our end,” Pasquale said in an email.

“(The department) is working with local law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services agencies to establish a dispatch procedure that will allow each agency to obtain the necessary information to effectively organize its response. “We are not aware of any issues at this time,” Pasquale said.

The Watchdog has learned that the Pennsylvania State Police are handling dispatching for themselves after calls to 911 were routed to their dispatchers by Lancaster County-Wide Communications.

“Similar to other departments, we strive to respond to requests for service as quickly as possible, but prioritize calls where life safety could be at risk. This category includes all “ongoing” incidents such as break-ins, assaults, etc. We also prioritize accidents where injuries have occurred or the road is blocked,” said spokesman Lt. Adam Reed.

In terms of state police, Lancaster County is served by Troop J, which covers more than 20 of the county’s 60 communities, primarily in the southern and eastern areas. Troop J also covers portions of Chester and York counties not served by the metropolitan police force.

“Because we cover such large areas, we urge our Soldiers to remain in their assigned patrol areas as much as possible during their operations. This contributes significantly to shortening long response times. Each of our districts and stations may be different, but they are held to the same standards and regulations regarding call response and distribution,” Reed said.

Bob May, general manager of Lancaster EMS, the largest provider of emergency medical services in the county, discussed EMS’s response.

The Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services recommends that EMS in an urban area like Lancaster respond to a call within eight minutes and 59 seconds 90% of the time.

“We are coping with that quite well. Here too it is a goal. “You’re in rural areas and it becomes a lot more difficult,” May said. That time period, May explained, doesn’t take into account the emergency call center receiving the caller’s information.

“When you call 911, you are speaking to a switchboard operator. The operator will transfer you to a caller. The caller will take your information. The caller will send the ambulance. And the ambulance has to react: the team has to leave the team accommodation. “You have to start the truck and open the garage door,” May said.

From shipping to opening the garage door is what is known as “chute time,” May said.

The response time extends from leaving EMS to arriving at the emergency scene, May said. That’s the goal in eight minutes and 59 seconds.

“Our goal for the slide time we have at Lancaster EMS is 90 seconds,” May said. “Our goal is to get there safely. Just because we turn on an emergency alert system doesn’t give us the right to drive unsafely and we have pretty strict policies and at the end of the day we want our employees to be able to arrive at the scene of an accident safely and go home to their families.”

Interestingly, The Watchdog learned from May that while ambulances use lights and sirens to get to a patient’s location, it is rare for them to use them to get to the hospital.

“We take the emergency room to the patient’s home and what’s important is early CPR. … That’s the bottom line,” May said.