Tag: Emergency Response
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New blaze prompts evacuations in southwest Colorado
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save A new wildfire in southwest Colorado promoted evacuations Friday near the town of Bayfield in La Plata County. A county news release said the Blue Ridge Fire was burning in the Forest Lakes subdivision. It had grown during the day from 3-5 acres to 25…
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Denver 911 proposes to double fee to improve response time, keep operations afloat
Denver’s public safety agency is pushing to roughly double the fee for 911 emergency services, arguing it’s necessary to keep operations afloat and meet response time requirements. The proposed fee hike — from $1.20 to $2.12 per month — would apply to all residents who have a phone, whether landline or mobile, registered in the city. …
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Denver fails to meet emergency response time goals, audit says
A city audit concluded that Denver’s emergency first responders are failing to meet their own response time goals — a situation that managers partly blamed on new laws that resulted in having less control over how often staffers could take a leave of absence. Emergency managers also said that, as a result, the city needs to…
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Aurora Fire adopts program to get right resources to 911 callers, increase response times
Aurora Fire Rescue will shift how resources are dispatched on 911 calls, partnering with Aurora911 and Falck Rocky Mountain to fine tune medical call responses. The program, called Right Response, will dispatch medical calls according to the incident’s acuity rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. People call 911 for a variety of reasons, some urgent…
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Six seconds: Smartphone app speeds up police response to school shootings
Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save In every school shooting, getting help to the scene is critical. But a bottleneck of the 911 system can impose minutes-long delays in dispatching police to critical incidents. Dozens — or even hundreds — of simultaneous phone calls from panicked students, teachers and parents can overwhelm…
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Colorado school safety agency launches statewide plan for dealing with school shootings
Colorado’s top school-safety agency has launched a plan designed to help schools prepare for and respond to large-scale emergencies, particularly shooting threats. In a Thursday news conference, the Colorado School Safety Resource Center announced the release of its Crisis Response Guidelines for K-12 Schools and Institutions of Higher Education, a 38-page document compiled by a…
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Denver 911 struggles to balance increased call volume amid staffing shortages
Denver 911 saw its highest call volume in at least five years in 2021 amid severe staffing shortages. Police dispatchers in Denver are 71% staffed. For emergency communication technicians — the people actually answering the phone when someone calls 911 — Denver is 60% staffed. There are 13 technicians in training and when they graduate at…