• The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said that the city's 911 call system was having difficulty Monday with cellphone calls coming in from multiple carriers being disconnected or delayed. As of around 4 pm, the issue was reportedly resolved. [Mission Local]
• The three victims killed in an alleged DUI crash in Napa Saturday morning have been identified. They were 65-year-old Vivian Bertolino and 62-year-old Linda Wolters, both of American Canyon; and 65-year-old Katrina Clarke of Sacramento. [KTVU]
• A semi truck went off what appears to be a narrow road in Crockett Monday, possibly after colliding with another vehicle, and the truck's cab was dangling precariously over a hill above a house. [ABC 7]

National:

• President Trump's executive order last week that directed the Department of Homeland Security to pay TSA officers their accrued wages resulted in them getting paychecks for two full pay periods, however they are still owed another week's pay. It remains unclear when they may be paid again. [New York Times]
• The optics of Republican lawmakers, in particular Lindsay Graham spotted out dining at Disney World over the weekend, out on their spring recess while DHS remains unfunded have not been great. [CNN]
• The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of "Tiger King" Joe Exotic, aka Joseph Maldonado-Passage, who has been trying to get his conviction on two counts of murder-for-hire overturned. [SCOTUSblog]

Video:

• San Francisco's house music scene, and the dance music world at large, lost a good one over the weekend. DJ Dan, aka Dan Wherrett, a fixture on the local scene and pioneer of what became known as San Francisco House and/or West Coast House, has died at age 57. The cause of death was not given, and as the Chronicle reports, he missed a scheduled gig in Reno on Saturday. Below, a clip of DJ Dan spinning at LovEvolution, the SF iteration of Love Parade/Love Fest, in Civic Center in 2009.

Photo by Finn J/Unsplash

Residents throughout Marin County received alerts Sunday night that emergency dispatch centers were having periodic outages and to seek help at their closest fire stations. AT&T mobile and internet service was reportedly down, which was expected to be restored by 11:30 am Monday.

Per Bay City News, as Marin County recovered from the weekend’s record-breaking king tides flooding, the sheriff’s office warned residents on social media — and sent out two emergency alerts to local cell phones — that various emergency dispatch centers throughout the county were dealing with intermittent outages. Residents were told to get help from their local fire stations if they were unable to connect to a dispatch operator.

The sheriff’s office also provided its non-emergency line, which is (415) 479-2311, and the San Rafael Police Department’s alternate line is (415) 485-3393, per KRON4.

Commenters mentioned on the sheriff’s office’s Facebook post that their landlines were also down, while pointing out the implications of all means of communication being disabled during a potential natural disaster. Others discussed the status of Highway 101, which was reportedly open, but some exits were still flooded.

Image: Marin County

San Francisco opened a brand new high-tech 911 call center on Wednesday. But early Thursday morning, the city’s 911 system crashed, and dispatchers were handling calls with pen and paper.

On Wednesday, the Examiner trumpeted the news that San Francisco was reopening its Western Addition 911 dispatch center after $9 million worth of upgrades.

“The opening of this new and improved Dispatch Center is a critical step forward in our work to protect the safety and well-being of all San Franciscans,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement. “This state-of-the-art facility underscores our dedication to public safety and commitment to supporting the life-saving work of our 911 Dispatchers.”

Not so fast. The Chronicle reports the city’s entire 911 system crashed on Thursday morning, not even one day later, forcing dispatchers to handle calls using pen and paper. According to KRON4, the computer outage lasted from about 5 am to 7:30 am Thursday morning.

The crash was limited to the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, and did not affect residents’ abilities to make calls, nor dispatchers ability to take those calls. The crash may have been completely unrelated to the new call center, though obviously, it’s a bad look the day after they just opened the revamped call center. The cause of the outage is still unknown, though the city’s Department of Emergency Management says this just illustrates why these and more upgrades are needed.  

“We are always ready for this. We have to be, because there are many circumstances that can require us to rely on redundant dispatch systems,” the Department of Emergency Management said in a statement to KRON4. “The purpose of our new CAD replacement project is to replace the current system, which is [at its] end of life. This is why the CAD replacement project is a top priority for the department.”

It is true that the new Western Addition call center is part of a larger $44 million upgrade to the entire system, and it’s great that the city is being proactive about upgrading it. They’re still procuring vendors and contracts for that larger overhaul, which hopes to modernize the system’s hardware, software, and networking capabilities. That project is slated to be completed in about two or three years.

According to the mayor’s press release, “San Francisco’s Dispatch Center, one of the top 25 busiest in the U.S., receives an average of 3,200 calls every day.”

Related: Oakland’s 911 System Fails After Thursday Afternoon Technical Glitch [SFist]

Image via City of San Francisco

What started as a PG&E outage turned into a hobbled 911 system for the city of Oakland, and the city’s 911 call center had trouble routing calls throughout Thursday afternoon and evening.

A standard summertime PG&E outage struck Oakland Thursday afternoon, affecting what the utility estimated at about 10,800 customers. But surely there are backup measures in place for first responders, right? There are, but they don’t always work, as KTVU reports that backup power failed at Oakland's 911 call center Thursday afternoon, and it’s unclear whether that system has fully recovered as of Friday morning,

"Routing of 911 calls is temporarily slower than normal as a result,” the City of Oakland Twitter account said just before 7:45 p.m. Thursday night. “All emergency calls are being answered and appropriately dispatched for police, fire, and medical services. If your call drops or you receive a busy signal, please hang up and call back.”

But the trouble started a few hours earlier, shortly after 3 p,m. Thursday, according to KTVU. When the outage hit, the call center reportedly tried to switch to its two backup power sources, one a generator and the other battery-powered.

The generator powered on, but its power switch didn’t work, rendering it useless. The battery system, which is apparently 20 years old, worked only for an hour.

As of late Thursday night, 911 calls were being routed to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office dispatch. The city gave no timeline for a repair, and as of Friday morning, there is no indication that Oakland’s 911 system is back to normal operations. We’ll update this post with any developments.

Related: Oakland Pivots Certain 911 Calls to Mental Health Crews, Helping Better Address Non-Violent Emergencies [SFist]

Image: CDC via Unsplash

According to the FCC, 70 percent of 911 calls are now placed from wireless phones. Understandably, that percentage is only growing. But whereas landlines can provide emergency services dispatchers with quick location details, wireless calls can not. That's the problem Oakland-based Blue Light wants to address, with its app sending 911 dispatchers your location from the comfort of your cell phone (even more precisely than would a landline).

Blue Light is employed by 300 college and corporate campuses in the US and has been recognized by the White House's Smart Cities Initiative. Now, it's expanding to its own backyard where emergency services have come under some scrutiny in recent years. (Currently the Oakland Police Department's own website directs callers to dial them directly in an emergency (510-777-3211), rather than calling 911 from a cell phone, because that will result in your call getting routed to Vallejo and having to be transferred back.)

"We believe that change starts at home," the company wrote in a post to Medium. "[We’ve] chosen our hometown, Oakland, to be the first connected BlueLight city."

Why Oakland, other than the fact the company is based there? Allow Blue Light to tell you. "Oakland is everything we embrace... diverse, vibrant, neighborly and innovative. It’s a city of conversations, both spirited and tough: a city of tension, cooperation, reflection, and — most of all — constant striving for self-improvement."

Oakland, as Blue Light hints with the word "tension," is also a city increasingly divided. With regard to the company's services, that's cause for some concern. That's because the company charges users $19.99 per year or $9.99 for students — a decision it justifies in several ways. First, Blue Light notes, 911 actually costs everyone money. "There’s a difference between “public” and “free” — and 911 has never been free," they write. "Take a look at your next cell phone bill and you’ll see that you do pay for 911 service — you personally — every month. On average, cell phone users pay between $0.50 and $4.00 per month for access to 911, up to $50/year."

Free or not, 911 is nonetheless public, while Blue Light is not. If the service works as promised, imagine this. Of two people involved in the same emergency, one using Blue Light and the other simply calling 911 from a cell phone, the one paying for a private service would receive treatment first.

"If the speed of tech innovation is the problem," Blue Light's Medium post explains (with regard to the advent of cell phones, disrupting the landline location system), "it must also be the solution. Where government gets dragged down by red tape, tech companies can move quickly to make new things possible."

According to an article in Wired last year, Blue Light's founder Preet Anand, 27, is a strong believer in an on-demand world. "I think that all of us who grew up in tech underestimate how big a deal it is," said the former lead product manager of Zynga. "Now on-demand services affect how you eat, how you navigate the world, how you conduct your work, how you get help in an emergency." But who is the "you?" of whom Anand speaks?

Previously: One Third Of 911 Calls In SF Are Butt Dials
City's New 911 System Is 'A Nightmare,' Say Dispatchers

In the year 2000, San Francisco police, fire, and other public safety agencies got a brand spanking new communications system. 14 years later, they're all still using that same ancient system, and they don't expect to replace it for four more years.

According to San Francisco's Department of Emergency Management, SF's 7,500 public safety radios are still using an analog 800 MHz Public Safety Land Mobile Radio System that, they say, "uses proprietary analog technology that has now reached end of life, with no replacement parts available." That's right—when one of those public safety radios breaks, there's apparently no way to fix it.

Last month, DEM says, they finally got approval and funding to replace the aging system used by their unit, as well as by SFPD, SFFD, the SF Sheriff's department, the SFMTA's Parking and Traffic units, and Recreation and Park.

The new radios, DEM says, will do such space-age things as offer "critical push-to-talk communications that connects instantly with the 9-1-1 dispatch center for dispatch to emergencies, or calling for backup from other officers in the field" and "will be interoperable across the Bay Area, so when a San Francisco police officer goes over to Oakland, her radio will still work." They will also "provide better coverage, like underground in BART stations, as well as down to the Airport."

Which seems to suggest that our current system does none of these things! That's certainly comforting. Guess we should just hope that no public safety officers need those abilities for the next four years, as the DEM says that they estimate that a full system replacement will not be complete until mid-2018. Until then, there's always this.

[DEM]

An allegedly frightened student at Selby Lane School in Atherton called 911 from the girls' bathroom after a teacher freaked out on his students and dropped/threw a desk. The 13-year-old girl, Maria Prado, claims her teacher, John Haynes, got mad and started swearing at students and "throwing furniture around." Police responded to the classroom, and after "investigating" they found that Haynes had only "dropped" a desk from a few inches above the ground, in order to get students' attention (we're picturing them tittering and texting), and the desk fell on its side.

A school district trustee said that the 911 call gave him pause, and that "You don't want any student to feel in fear." The district has responded by putting Mr. Haynes on administrative leave, pending a further investigation. The student's mother, Ruby Prado, sounds like she blames her daughter for being a busybody and a wimp, and rushes to Haynes' defense, saying he's an excellent teacher, it's all been "blown out of proportion," and her daughter wouldn't be on the Honor Roll without him.

Bonus: Here's the audio of the girl's 911 call.

Photo, not of Mr. Haynes, by Charlotte King.

[Daily News via NBC]

A Palo Alto 11 dispatch center got 566 phantom emergency calls in five hours, reports KTVU. "The siege of calls to the Palo Alto emergency communications center started Jan 13 at 8:30 p.m. when a dispatcher picked up the line to find no one on the other end. Twenty-seconds later, another phantom call came in." The potentially fatal snafu was =, most likely, due to "technology run amok rather than a prankster." [KTVU]

Hollister resident John Patrick Bedell, 36, was shot and killed last night after pulling a handgun at the Pentagon entrance and firing at guards. Bedell held a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz (we're going to guess he was at Kresge), and also attended San Jose State University to study biochemistry.

Bedell, it seems, had a strong "distrust of the federal government.," and suspected that "a criminal enterprise run out of the government could have staged the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks" -- a bizarre, though possibly true, line of thought typically held among straight white men.

The DimeWars Research staff obtained some of John Patrick Bedell's rants on Wikipedia.

I have an intense personal desire for freedom, and I need your help so that we can, together, continue to enjoy the benefits of freedom and work toward the more perfect realization of liberty and justice in our society. My effort to realize greater freedom in our world is a long-term effort and this message is a first step to begin a dialogue with you that I expect will enable us to take action in the future to have more secure more prosperous and happier lives.

At the bargain price of just $35 dollars down at City Hall this morning, authorities released the emergency 911 tapes of the San Francisco Zoo tiger attacks. The attacks, if you don't remember, occurred on Christmas Day, taking the life of Carlos Sousa Jr. and injuring the now (in)famous Dhaliwal brothers. The footage is raw, with the most unnerving robotic British female voice overlapping the frantic phone call, but to check listen to the audio, go here. According to the Gate:

The dispatch records include the original call that was made at 5:04 p.m., three full minutes before fire and police logs show anyone was sent to the emergency. The call lasts more than 19 minutes. It was made by a zoo security guard and includes radio transmissions (broadcast over zoo radio and picked up over the 911 dispatch recording of the call) from zoo official Deb Howe who asks for police and fire while downplaying the incident. But after realizing a tiger is loose, Howe says at one point: "Alan, I've got a tiger out. Code One." Alan Feinberg, another zoo official, responds in shock over the radio: "What?"

Overall, you get to hear zoo officials freaking the hell out over the crisis while coming to the sad realization that Sousa has just died. Grim stuff.

Less than a week after the fatal tiger mauling at the SF Zoo, much of the news that has (slowly) unraveled from the Christmas Day tiger attacks has been disheartening. From the downplayed info about the too-short tiger pen fence, conflicting evidence that the three boys taunted the Siberian tiger just before the attack, and that emergency protocol wasn't followed by SF Zoo employees, there are more chin-scratching facts to add to the list. Take, for example, the lack of concern the two brothers felt for their dead friend, Carlos. According to a law enforcement source, as the brothers were being transported from the zoo to the hospital, "one brother told the other not to talk to anyone." The source went on to say that "they were more concerned with their car in the parking lot and that it would be okay." (Sure, people have different reactions in time of grief, but still: Ouch.)

In more news, 911 tapes were released on Friday. According to SF Examiner:

Emergency personnel were first notified at 5:08 p.m. when a Terrace Café employee called 911 saying an "agitated man is claiming he was bitten by an animal," according to the transcript.

The two brothers attacked were initially considered mentally unstable by zoo personnel and "making something up" about a tiger biting one of them, the transcript says.

The transcript depicts a scene quickly descending into fear when at 5:11 p.m. the transcript read, "The tiger is out of the gate and they are locking up the zoo."