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LA Fire Chief: Dispatch System 'Level Of Reliability' Improved

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department told an oversight panel Tuesday that technical problems with the department's dispatch system have mostly been resolved.

KNX 1070's Pete Demetriou reports Chief Brian Cummings gave an update on the upgrades to the city Fire Commission.

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Crews went through millions of feet of wire and fiber optic cables to resolve issues involving alarm failures, loss of radio or digital voice dispatch alerts along with printouts of alarms that began occurring Mar. 7 at stations department-wide.

"We were able to identify some small issues in quite a few different areas in the technology and with that we've been able to bring the system back up to the level of reliability we had," said Cummings.

He also reported on updated data showing the LAFD meets the national standard on response times 86 percent of structure fires.

Units responding to an advanced life-saving call met U.S. requirements 64 percent of the time — a number that Cummings said the department is working hard to improve.

"We do have redundant systems in place with our dispatch to make sure that if any one system fails, there are multiple backups because we do have to have 100 percent reliability there, because this is public safety we're talking about it," he said.

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