Carmel council hears limits of local 911 system and inconsistent response-time data

Carmel-by-the-Sea's fire and emergency services leaders told the City Council on March 30 that the city's separate 911 intake adds about 45 seconds to 90 seconds before Monterey County dispatches fire and ambulance units, and that the city cannot produce an exact total response-time figure because its clocks are not synchronized with the county's.

The information matters because the city reports monthly on a council directive from 2012, which set an internal target that 95 percent of calls should have a call-to-door time of five minutes or less. The council discussed whether the monthly report should include the full timeline from caller to arrival and asked about ways to make the figures clearer for the public.

Paul, the city's fire chief, explained that Carmel continues to receive 911 calls locally because Monterey County dispatchers do not reliably recognize Carmel's address system. "If you call 911 in our city, it's going to our dispatch," Paul said, describing how Carmel staff take the initial information, confirm an address and then transfer the call to Monterey County for final dispatch. He said that transfer creates a delay "anywhere from a 45 second to about a minute and 30" on top of the county's reported interval.

Council members and residents pressed staff on whether the full elapsed time from caller to first unit arrival could be reconstructed. Paul said the city logs the time the call is received and the time it is transferred to Monterey County and that Monterey provides the county-side times, but the two systems run on different clocks and do not align. "Our clock does not sync up with the county dispatch clock, so we don't know exactly what that time is," he said.

Council members asked whether staff could assemble a composite measure by matching the city's transfer timestamp with county dispatch and unit arrival records. Paul said such a review is possible but would require staff time to pull individual incident records. He also noted that a wrong or incomplete address provided by callers can materially increase response time: in one recent fatal fall reviewed by council members, an incorrect address routed responders to a dead end and lengthened the initial leg of the response.

Public commenters urged improvements to the addressing system and to measures that would reduce confusion for transient visitors and renters. Karen Ferlito, a former council member speaking during public comment, recounted a recent medical emergency in which callers and responders struggled to identify a location and said, "It would be so much easier to say 123 Main Street. Boom." She and others recommended exploring standardizing addresses or improving caller instructions so Monterey County could dispatch directly when possible.

Council members asked staff to report back with options and costs: potential short-term steps such as better documenting the city's transfer times and the feasibility of asking Monterey County and AMR (the county ambulance contractor) for combined response-time metrics; and longer-term changes such as an addressing review or work to better align clocks or data exchanges.

The council did not take formal policy action on this item at the meeting, but the discussion produced clear direction to staff to pursue follow-up data gathering and to return with recommendations for reporting and operational options.