Mayor Rodrigo Duterte & Davao 911

He personally shows guests around the headquarters of Davao City’s Central 911 Rescue Services along Ponciano Reyes Street, and one can see that Mayor Rodrigo Duterte takes great pride in his dream project.

And he has every reason to be proud of the city’s Central 911, the only one in the country and one of the only three places in the world’– the other two being the United States and Canada – that has such an emergency response and rescue system.

“And this is for free to the people of Davao City. This is where taxpayers’ money goes. You cannot find anything like this anywhere in the country,” Duterte beams.

The feisty and often controversial mayor explains that the idea behind the Central 911 was to put in place centralized control for all the emergency calls in the city and to enable public safety agencies to respond to emergency cases and crime incidents in a quick, more effective and coordinated manner.

It is part of bringing government closer to the people and being of real service to the more than 1.6 million residents of this leading growth center in the south.

The center operates 24/7 and when a call comes in it locates the scene of the emergency, dispatches and also tracks the positions of responding units.

According to Col. Mario Verner Monsanto, chief of the Central 911 communications and operations center, the response time for police cases is seven minutes on average, while emergency medical cases average 12 to 13 minutes, depending on the distance.

Furthermore, Central 911 captures, stores and recalls data through its Emergency Computer Aided Dispatch System (ECAD) developed by the Davao Light and Power Company, which enables the center to track down calls and locate the emergency site if residents just give the locator number found in the power company’s billing statements. The ECAD system utilizes GIS maps plotted with grid lines to triangulate the exact location of the caller.

Central 911 is also interconnected with telecommunications firms such as the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, Bayantel, Globe, Smart and Sun Cellular, to enable easy access via mobile phone.

Central 911 has, not surprisingly, gotten its share of prank calls. But Duterte found a solution to the problem by reading out the telephone numbers of the prank callers during his weekly TV program “Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa.” Monsanto said that since the mayor started reading the numbers, the volume of prank calls has significantly dropped.

Monsanto said most prank calls were noted to originate from mobile phones. “So we made an arrangement with the different telecommunication companies that when-ever one dials 911, the calls will no longer be free, so prank callers have to pay,” Monsanto said. For real emergency cases though, if the one calling runs out of pre-paid load credit, Central 911 could initiate a call back so that the emergency could be properly attended to. From April to June this year, Central 911 received 9,266 legitimate calls; prank calls were eliminated from the records.

Davao City’s Central 911 started as early as September 2002 to address emergency calls for criminal incidents needing police assistance. In November 2003 Central 911 launched its emergency medical services component with the initial acquisition of four vehicles converted into ambulances and equipped with life-saving devices. Each ambulance operates with a paramedic team on daily three-shift duty.

In January 2004, Central 911 expanded its capabilities and services. Aside from police and emergency medical services, it also caters to urban search and rescue operations, fire auxiliary services and K-9 units.

Davao City Police Office chief Senior Superintendent Jaime Morente says Central 911 makes it easier for police to respond to criminal incidents and other situations needing police assistance.

“Usually the three patrol units nearest to the scene are the first ones to respond, even if the emergency call is alerted on a flash alarm to all patrol cars,” Morente explains.

“I am very firm when it comes to police response,” Duterte says. “Law enforcers should immediately be dispatched to any crime incident as one of our ways to address the peace and order concerns in the city.” A tie-up has also been established with the Army-led Task Force Davao unit primarily tasked with anti- and counter-terrorism cases in the city, but which also augments the existing city police forces.

Central 911 currently has 10 fully equipped ambulances, staffed with well-trained paramedic teams.

“We respond to every kind of medical emergency. But we have to make it clear that our priority is pre-hospital emergency cases. We are not hospital-based. So, for those who are already inside a medical facility, they would not be our priority,” Monsanto explains.

He admits that there are problems with people who want to avail of the ambulance service which is free, compared to charges of as much as P5,000 each ambulance trip.

“We cannot please everybody. And we have very limited resources and at times we even run out of ambulances. There are really cases that we turn down, depending on the prevailing situation and the gravity of the case. Sometimes it really would be better and faster for them to get private vehicles to bring them to the nearest hospital,” Monsanto says.

The ambulance units are parked at the premises of the Davao Light and Power Company, located just across the Central 911 main center, which becomes the determining point for the distance to where the emergency is.  

Monsanto cites the need for people to be more aware of the hierarchy of emergency cases, the highest of which is actual life threatening incidents. Medical cases like trauma, he says, have a window of opportunity of one hour from the time of onset, compared to stroke cases that normally have a window of three hours.

“Normally, our call center people are trained to identify if the patient is really suffering from any emergency. And that is why we conduct online assessment which enables us to determine if the situation is really an emergency or not,” explains Monsato, adding that some people just can’t understand why questions have to be asked whenever they call in an emergency to Central 911.

Besides, Monsanto says, center employees also have to determine whether the emergency call is for real or just another prankster making bad jokes.

Monsanto says they welcome negative feedback from the city residents, which would help them better their services.

Duterte has instructed Central 911 emergency medical teams not to pick up or assist drunkards found sleeping on the road.

“I have always been very clear that the 911 services would be for people who are in real emergencies and not for people who drink too much and find themselves aimlessly loitering in the streets. The 911 is not for drunkards,” the mayor emphasizes. 

Comprising the 911 Urban Search and Rescue Team are dozens of rescue technicians highly trained in land and sea rescue operations. The team also has their own rescue vehicles and rubber boats and other necessary equipment.

Central 911 also provides fire auxiliary services manned by 30 fighters with two fire trucks and a pumper. Such services are aimed at augmenting the existing capability of the Bureau of Fire Protection and the volunteer fire brigades in the city.

Duterte says Central 911 also has eight K-9 dogs, reported to be worth several million pesos excluding training for the bomb-sniffing dogs that are usually dispatched at the Davao International Airport, the Sasa Wharf, the Davao City Overland Bus Terminal and other big establishments and public places in the city.

Of all the services that Central 911 offers, which do residents call most for most often? Based on April to June, 2007 records, 77.2 percent of the 9,266 calls were for law enforcement cases, while 20.2 percent were for emergency medical services, 1.5 percent for fire and 1.0 percent for rescue services. Bomb and bomb threat cases account for 0.1 percent of the said calls.

While the operation of Central 911 may indeed entail high costs, with its funding taken from the local government’s peace and order fund, the mayor says the whole project is worth it, no matter what the cost.

“It is an amount well-spent down to its last centavo. We are talking here of public safety and we cannot put the welfare of the people in jeopardy just because we cannot come up with an efficient system . Although much still needs to be done, things are finally in place and we will continue to be of service to the people with our very own 911 system,” the mayor adds.