Some of the Grand Plan

[Guest guest]

Hey, last year's New Year's Eve has NUTHIN' on this one! <taking a deep breath>

For anybody that's curious, those nine SF Bay Area counties for which GGCC

usually answers wireless 9-1-1 calls are being parceled out between FOUR other

CHP Comm Centers. (Not just two of them, as mentioned in the news blurb I've

already posted from home...) So, in addition to the coverage area already within

those Centers' boundaries, there's this extra stuff that GGCC would handle if

there were dispatchers still there answering the calls.

Given the fact that cell-site " bounce " occurs and many calls get routed by the

cellular carriers to complete their calls from sites far from the caller's

actual location, the best-guess distribution between our CHP Comm Centers is as

follows:

Ukiah (Non-CAD) is answering calls from San Francisco and Marin Counties.

Sacramento is answering: Solano, Sonoma and Napa calls.

Stockton is taking calls from Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

Monterey is answering calls from San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. (We

already answered 2/3rd of Santa Clara County, anyway, but " our " southern chunk

isn't as heavily populated at that northern third of the county.)

So... <ahem> I wasn't due in until 2000 hrs - as originally planned to have a

Comm Sup handy for the NY Eve activity, but as we all know in this biz: " things

change. "

The GGCC dispatchers that are at the various CHP Area Offices, taking calls

we're transferring back to them, then dispatching off the base stations, are

most helpful to us. Sometimes an officer answers the phone(s), instead, and

there's a scramble to get a dispatcher to take the call from us. <grin>

The allied agency folks are bemused by our calls too, when we announce we're

" Monterey CHP " and we sure hope we got the right place to transfer a call....

I've been here since 1300. I brought in frosted animal cookies (those

" circus " cookies, because it amused me) and other goodies. I wasn't able to

organize the sparkling apple cider and fancy plastic champagne glasses, but we

do have silly hats and noise-makers. (Not sure if they're in the mood - and for

once, I'm not really feeling too much like making fun out of this experience,

either.)

That's a lie - we've been laughing about the silly calls that occur much further

away than those we're used to handling. (One gentleman couldn't get his car

started in the parking garage of San Francisco International Airport and dialed

9-1-1 on his cell phone because he'd called a tow truck, but the company

couldn't FIND his car from his directions and had refused to come out a 2nd

time. I told him to go to a pay phone, use the phone book to call another

company, and have the tow truck MEET him at the terminal and then he could ride

with it and SHOW the driver where his car was parked. Well, DUH.)

And then a lady argued with me about making a non-emergency call to 9-1-1 with

her cell phone. She said, " There's an agreement that we can dial 9-1-1 for

non-emergencies on our cell phones. "

I told her I didn't know where she'd imagined THAT " agreement " but she was

acting on incorrect information. I had a much pithier comment to make but

stopped myself in time. <dimpling>

Of course we've got more " hang-ups " to call back now, too. Lots of folks like to

argue with us: they DID NOT dial 9-1-1 and THEIR phone DID NOT do it by itself,

either. (Where do they think we get their numbers??) Oh, sorry, I guess we

didn't call you back to check on your welfare, then.....

Okay, my break is up; back to trying to figure out where the heck some more of

these calls need to be transferred.

Happy to be here, proud to serve.