Excerpts from Story:

911 system needs CPR, say chiefs Fire, police departments complain of bad software, frozen computers

Saturday, January 29, 2000

By James L. Smith and Edward L. Ronders

JOURNAL STAFF WRITERS

Flint Twp. -

Flint Township Fire Chief Greg Wright has unplugged the 911 computers in his fire department headquarters, saying the system is so problem-plagued he'd rather go back to dispatching the old-fashioned way.

And he's told the county 911 center he is doing just that.

Other area police and fire chiefs said they, too, are looking for a lifeboat after years of what they call computer and radio problems at Genesee County's 911 center.

The problems range from broken modems and computers that freeze up to an inability to print out fire call information at the stations so firefighters can take it to the scene.

Lloyd Fayling, head of the 911 center, blamed the problems on a software program that was not Y2K compliant and the December installation of a quick fix program that so far hasn't been de-bugged.

Acknowledging that some of the fire and police computers are not working, Fayling said technicians are correcting the problems and that he is keeping the chiefs informed of the progress.

Once the computers are running correctly, they will provide a great deal of information not currently available, Fayling said. "We have solid guarantees they will be repaired."

http://fl.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20000128fcounty911.frm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 29, 2000

Answers

Solid guarantees.

Sheesh.

-- Sluggo (sluggo@your.head), January 29, 2000.