Artificial Intelligence Call Rakers Helped 9-1-1 Center During History Chattanooga, TN, Flooding

Emergency call ring times to Hamilton County 911's center lasted more than five times longer than usual the night of Chattanooga's historic Aug. 12 floods, according to officials.

From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., dispatchers answered hundreds of calls for help from trapped families and stranded drivers. Not a single 911 call went unanswered, Executive Director Jeff Carney said by phone, but the surge stretched the center beyond normal limits. While an artificial intelligence operator helped mitigate the surge, Carney said, no agency can properly prepare for a disaster like Aug. 12.

In the 6 p.m. hour, the 911 center fielded 163 emergency calls, about triple the usual volume, and answered them all within 48 seconds. By 7 p.m., the load swelled to 230 calls, nearly five times normal, Carney said. Ninety-seven percent were answered within 48 seconds, and 100% within 60 seconds. Typically, 97% of 911 calls are answered in under nine seconds, he said.

So for me to tell you that we were answering that percentage in 48 seconds, that's a long time for us," Carney said. "So it might be something that people in the area aren't familiar with, but when there's something big like that going on, you can expect a longer ring time perhaps."

At least 42 calls that came in to the nonemergency line and were identified as priority calls needing a dispatcher's attention did go unanswered.

The 911 center has more than 130 dispatchers, officially known as telecommunicators, according to its website. Carney said reinforcements were called in that day as the situation worsened, ultimately putting 35 to 36 people on phones and radios. Still, he said, the center is always hiring.

"One of the things we're not happy about right now is we are short," he said. "We're short about 40 people, and we have mandatory overtime in place if we can't meet the minimum staffing."

INSIDE THE CALLS

The historic flash floods that left four people dead that day began with a wave of panicked calls for help. Near Belvoir, a woman huddled in an apartment with her sister, mother and baby as water lurched in. She dialed 911 and asked the operator for help.

"I don't want to die," the woman said by phone. "It's flooding, and the flood is coming in the house."

Gaynell Acklin, 72, was headed to her sister's house when traffic suddenly stopped around the 4700 block of Montview Drive. She thinks she made around three calls to Hamilton County 911. In a follow-up phone interview, Acklin said she can't swim and didn't know that area.

When Acklin first called, the floodwaters had reached up to the floorboard of her 2017 Chevy Cruze, and the operator told her help was coming. The water had killed her motor, Acklin said, and she had a stress test for her heart the next day.

"Oh God, my stress test ain't gonna come out good tomorrow," she told the dispatcher.

Acklin called again when the water rose to her knees. The operator asked her to get to higher ground if she could, either by climbing out the window or pushing the door open. The water held back the door, and a knee replacement about five years ago kept her from using the open window.

"The water is to my knees, it's coming up to my knees now, so it's going to be full in a minute," Acklin said. "I can't get out, I guess I'm going to drown because I can't get out."

The Fire Department reached her, Acklin said, and a firefighter wanted her to climb on his back and get out, but she said her nephew and niece arrived and relieved the firefighter, so the department could go help others who were trapped.

With her car totaled, Acklin said in a follow-up phone interview that she couldn't make it to the stress test, but she didn't think it was wise to go anyway. Everything ended up being fine with her heart. While she works on getting a new car, she said the rental fees are overwhelming.

On the interstate, as floodwater snaked into Megan Grass' Chevy Traverse, her voice trembled over the emergency line. She is a special education pre-K teacher, and she was on her way to her weekly trivia night with her family when traffic stalled.

"I was a competitive swimmer, and this is one of my biggest fears, is drowning, because there's no reason for me to drown, ever," Grass said by phone. "And I remember just sitting there in my car and watching it fill up with water and being like, this is it, like my worst fear is coming true."

The first time she dialed 911 was around 7:20 p.m., when water lapped at the bottom of her door. The dispatcher asked her if she felt safe in her car, Grass said, and she did at the time.

"And he said, you know, if you need us, call us back," she said in a follow-up phone interview.

Twenty minutes later, water was almost up to her dashboard, she said. The weight of the deluge pinned her doors shut. Grass said the floodwaters poured inside her SUV like how a bathtub fills up. She called 911 again.

"I'm between Spring Creek Road and McBrien, and the water is coming in my car, it's up over my heels in my car," she said in the call. "Oh God, my window won't open. How do I get out, please, how do I get out?"

The second emergency line operator told Grass to go ahead and shut her car off and then to safely climb on top of her vehicle. The windows wouldn't roll down, so the dispatcher asked Grass to turn the car back on. The windows didn't budge. The operator asked if Grass had a sunroof. She did not.

Grass said that, at one point, she watched as two cars floated by her, and she witnessed a man bust an SUV window and pull a woman out. In the meantime, the operator had checked with a supervisor and told Grass to open her doors if she could. If not, first responders were headed that way.

Moments later, Grass saw some guys, at least one of whom drove a Lawson Electric truck, she said, start helping pull people from cars. She told the dispatcher she would ask for the guys' help, and the call ended.

Contributed Photo / Megan Grass took pictures of her totaled SUV for insurance purposes.

"I was literally perched on the console in the middle of my car, just praying for help," Grass said. "If the gentlemen hadn't been walking between cars to check on people, I would have been stuck in my car for who knows how long."

Once rescued, Grass spent the next several hours sitting on a truck bed, her legs dangling over the edge in murky, debris-choked floodwater. She said it smelled like raw sewage and mud.

"Never in a million years did I think I would be sitting on the interstate and watching my car fill with water," she said.

While her insurance helped her replace her totaled car, her sense of safety was washed away. Grass said she struggled to drive her new car through the car wash and that she's still fearful to drive in the rain. Still, she wanted to share what lessons she's learned from the flood on social media, and she tried her luck at something more positive.

"I did go buy a lottery ticket, because I was like, man, if I'm gonna get stuck in a flood, maybe I'll have some better luck and win the lottery," Grass said. "But, it didn't happen that way."

CALL CENTER

The first indication of a disaster like the flood is the inundation of calls, Carney, the 911 call center's executive director, said in an interview.

"You may have one or two ringing, three or four operators on the phone at a time, then all of a sudden, every line in here lights up," he said, "and, you know something has happened."

The center triages calls, prioritizing saving lives over property, and artificial intelligence call handling on the nonemergency line was valuable during the floods, Carney said.

The same people who take emergency calls also answer the nonemergency line, Carney said. Not every call needed immediate assistance, like when a man dialed 911 about three snapping turtles who washed up in a parking lot near the Jersey Mike's off Gunbarrel Road.

"I didn't know who to call, I just don't want something that's not an emergency now to turn into an emergency, you know," the caller said. "I'd for hate somebody to run them over, get a flat tire, they get bit."

Before the center launched its artificial intelligence operator, Carney said, the virtual dispatcher listened to over 2,000 hours of Hamilton County 911 calls. Carney said the public needs to know artificial intelligence isn't like a phone robot or phone tree.

"She wants you to talk like you're talking to a person," Carney said. "And if it turns out that you do need to speak to telecommunicators, going through her actually puts you at the head of the line coming in, because she'll transfer you to a telecommunicator, and it comes in higher authority than the other 10-digit calls.

Between handling the calls, dealing with the public and first responders, Carney said he was happy with his staff's response, but there were some administrative lessons learned. He said some of the reporting that goes out to the Emergency Operations Center needed improvement, as well as liaison capabilities with other agencies at a higher level.

The biggest issue is the employee shortage, he said. The center is always hiring, he said, and it's a job with a sense of purpose.

"People often don't think about these telecommunicators until they need them, but they need to know they're always here," Carney said. "They need to be recognized as first responders, treated like first responders and rewarded like first responders."

SAVING LIVES

The moment the center started getting calls about the flooded interstate, telecommunicator Devin Lusardo knew people would be talking about Aug. 12 for a long time. Usually, calls are mundane, he said in an interview, like lost property.

"But every once in a while, you get days like this," he said.

There was a blend of people trapped in vehicles and stuck in homes, but the call that stuck with Lusardo was when a Spanish-speaking woman called asking for help. The translator struggled to understand the woman over the sound of the water rushing into her home. It was intense, he said, because an operator wants to help someone as much as possible until help arrives.

"I just try to picture every call as someone that I personally know and care about," he said. "And when calls are just pouring in, one on top of the other, you just gotta do what you can, move onto the next one."

The hard part of his job, Lusardo said, is that telecommunicators rarely get to see the outcome. Lusardo knew he'd made a difference in the community, he said, when he got his lifesaver award in 2022 for walking parents through CPR for their 4-year-old girl.

"By the time the ambulance gets there, she's breathing again," Lusardo said.

Anytime there's a disaster, Lusardo is thinking about his mom in the back of his mind. She lives in a flood zone, and the last time tornadoes swept through the region, it narrowly missed her house. It's a balance, he said, between helping people on the line and thinking about his loved ones.

"I try to compartmentalize my life and break things down into like personal and professional," he said. "So the work is stressful, but when I go home, I leave the work at work. I leave my home life at home."

At the end of his shift, Lusardo said he slept like a rock. While he said he had never been more exhausted in his life, he was happy to help that day.

"I think what we endured was nothing compared to what the citizens endured," he said. "I was just glad to be the voice on the other side of the line guiding people through what they're going through.

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