BATON ROUGE - Like police, fire, and other public service jobs there is a national shortage of 911 call operators and it affects Baton Rouge. 

Recently, it's taken two minutes for some calls to be answered. It happens when operators are out sick or people are off.

"We do have to work short-staffed sometimes and what that means unfortunately is that a 911 call might ring longer than it should," said Brad Harris with East Baton Rouge EMS.

East Baton Rouge 911 call operators answer anywhere from 1,100 to 1,400 calls a day. Thursday through Sunday are the busiest days. While there are systems in place to manage a short-staffed situation, the call volume works best with all hands on deck.

"To manage that with only four to six people answering 1,000 calls a day it's really tough," Harris said.

The national standard is for an emergency call to be answered in 15 seconds. Like other public service jobs, there are shortages. To fill the gaps East Baton Rouge, EMS is recruiting emergency call operators and offering a competitive salary. The job is stressful and it's a field that a lot of people aren't eager to join.

"You just never know what that one call might be that's going to affect you," Harris said.

Even so, 911 calls need to be answered.

While there are staff shortages, Director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Communications District Jim Verlander says that two months from now a new operating system will help prevent failures and help answer calls in a timely manner.

"Instead of somebody that might be sitting on 911 for two minutes, we can set it to after 30 seconds it would roll to another agency," Verlander said.

That other agency could be in a different parish. The new operating system will also help prevent disruption, like what happened in 2021 when AT&T went down.

"We're talking about a very aging 911 system, which is AT&T. A lot of that technology has been around since the 60s and 70s to moving into a digital cloud-based system," Verlander said.

Until then, if you call 911 and it takes longer than expected stay on the line and do not hang up.

"Just know that we are going to answer that call," Harris said.