You think you have it rough!

911 calls to the Chattanooga, TN emergency dispatch have been going unsnswered. It appears that they have a staff of 4 employees and maybe 1 more is an order. It appears that if you call 911 and members of their staff are on break, you might have to put your emergency on hold and wait for the next available operator or call back later.

The dispatch service let almost 30,000 calls go unanswered in the past year. To be fair to them, this might include people who were able to put their emergencies on hold and call back later. Any way you look at it, there appears to be a problem worth looking into here.

On a more personal note, I called because of am emergency in Knoxville, TN recently and they did answer the call promptly. It just took over an hour and a half for help to arrive. Good thing for me that it was not life threatening. When I asked an officer that eventually did arrive, he said he was all the way on the other side of town. I did not know it takes an hour and a half to get from one side of town to the other. Maybe I can use that excuse the next time I am late for work.