Houstonist brings our attention to the latest problems at the Houston Emergency Center:
Police union representatives met with city officials Monday and gave them an urgent message: Houston’s 911 center is understtaffed and underprepared for a major disaster. Union reps say calls to the Houston Emergency Center have increased 18 percent since Katrina, which has sretched operators thin.
[snip]
In addition to the understaffing, union reps say the HEC staff suffers from low morale and high turnover, and their complaints have been ignored. But a solution isn’t clear at this point: Though the emergency center will ask for $500,000 to help pay for additional staff, union officials said they won’t support the hiring of any new employees until problems at the center are fixed.
Here’s the title of the post: “A crisis at Houston’s 911 center?”
That question mark can be knocked right off the headline, because as we all know there’s been a crisis at HEC for many, many months now. Computer failures, outdated equipment, low morale, asinine productivity policy, understaffed and overworked employees, poor training, etc, etc. (blogHOUSTON’s archives contain many posts on the topic.)
City Controller Annise Parker’s July 2005 audit identified multiple areas of deficiency at the trouble-plagued call center. Here’s a link to that report, and a summary of areas needing improvement begins on page thirteen of the almost 300 page (pdf) report.
Unfortunately it sounds as if nothing has changed at Houston’s 911 call center. Just a whole lot of the same old, same old.
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