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December 6, 2003Hazard exposes big 911 problemCouple's call was routed to Big RapidsByRecord-Eagle staff writer TRAVERSE CITY - Ed Lewis stepped off the curb while raking last month and narrowly missed an open sewer grate. But his near-miss accident helped him discover a big glitch in his 911 service when he called to report the hazard. His call was answered by a dispatcher 80 miles away. His wife, Sandy, fears they never would have known 911 calls from their Traverse City home were being picked up in Big Rapids had it not been for the accidental discovery. She said sorting out the correct address and information would have cost valuable response time during a real emergency. "If I had been in a dire emergency and just dialed 911, they would have sent an ambulance to a house in Big Rapids," Sandy Lewis said. "How long do you wait then? They always say if you have a stroke, the first 20 minutes is the most important." The Lewis' 911 service was corrected Tuesday, almost three weeks after they first reported the problem. Dispatchers still don't know why calls were forwarded elsewhere, especially since Ed Lewis has lived at the address for 48 years. Jamel Anderson, Grand Traverse County 911 director, said only a "couple" of the thousands of emergency calls made to her office are errors. Most are because the caller has moved and their new address hasn't caught up with their phone number yet. "Considering the amount of 911 calls received, we have a very low error rate," she said. "And the errors we do discover are normally corrected right away." Deputies are trained to immediately verify the address of the caller that pops up on their computer when 911 calls are received, said Laurie Smalla, director of the Meceola Central Dispatch, which serves Mecosta and Osceola counties. But the Lewis' Traverse City street address is similar to a street address in Big Rapids, she said. It is the responsibility of the county receiving a misrouted 911 call to report the problem. Smalla filed two written reports and sent one e-mail to the company her county contracts with to provide data information. Anderson said such mix-ups are supposed to be fixed within five business days. A representative from Intrada, the company that sorts and filters 911 calls in Grand Traverse, Mecosta and Osceola counties, said she couldn't comment on the delay to fix the problem because it was handled by a secondary company with which Intrada works. "Nobody wants errors to be in the system for very long, but in this case, I am not sure what the problem was," Anderson said. Sandy Lewis said she is encouraging her friends and family to call 911 during a slow part of the day to ensure their call is really going where it should. "I would just like to know that this hasn't happened to anyone else," she said. "We trusted this for all these years, we paid for it and we didn't have it." But 911 directors said everyone calling in would flood the system and could tie up dispatchers during an emergency. People should check their service if they have moved recently or if they have any other reason to believe that the information is not correct, they said.
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