Portland 911 operators are answering the phone four times faster than they did four years ago, according to a city audit released Wednesday.

“We found that Emergency Communications’ focus on recruiting, hiring, and training the next generation of dispatchers has helped the Bureau address its 911 staffing shortage—ensuring Portlanders’ calls are answered more quickly, and reducing risk to public safety,” said City Auditor Simone Rede in a statement.

Yet, the city’s 911 operator response is still slower than the national standard. The report comes two months after the bureau earned a level of accreditation that put it in the top 10% of dispatch agencies in the world.

Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications operators answer all 911 calls and alert the appropriate emergency teams to respond – whether that be firefighters, police or mental health workers.

The national standard is for 90% of all 911 calls to be answered within 15 seconds.

Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications saw dozens of staff leave during the COVID-19 pandemic, following a nationwide trend among 911 call centers.

In 2022, the department had about 33 vacant positions. The average wait time for someone calling 911 was around 77 seconds.

The latest data show six vacancies in the office and a call wait time of 18 seconds. This is both higher than the industry standard and slower than Portland’s pre-pandemic call wait time of 11 seconds.

The audit comes a week after the Portland City Council adopted an annual budget that public safety officials say will greatly increase the amount of time it takes police to respond to 911 calls.

That measurement is different from the 911 operator response. Police response is the amount of time it takes for officers to show up to an emergency after a 911 operator dispatches them.

That budget included an 80% reduction to a Portland Police Bureau program that sends unarmed officers to respond to low-level, non-violent 911 calls. This program was built to reduce the number of emergency calls that armed officers must respond to. City public safety officials have said those cuts will likely lead to slower emergency response times.

“This scale back is obviously going to translate into them taking less calls for service, which means those lower-priority calls will go unanswered for an extended period of time,” said PPB Chief Bob Day at an April press conference. “I anticipate there to be longer wait times.”

City councilors were able to protect the Bureau of Emergency Communications from most cuts proposed by Mayor Keith Wilson this budget cycle.

The audit finds the city’s 911 department is on the right track to hitting a swifter call response time, and suggests some ways to get there. Many of the recommendations center on improving recruitment and training.

According to the audit, the emergency communications department has seen a high number of applicants for operator jobs, but nearly half of the trainees leave before their training is finished.

That comes with a cost.

“Over the course of about 3.5 years, the City paid $3.4 million in salaries, benefits, and related costs for Emergency Communications dispatcher trainees who were terminated or resigned during training,” the report finds.

Auditors say that could be due to unclear expectations about what the job requires, and they suggest the city be clearer about the job requirements early on. They also recommend additional training for staff leading the training programs, and clarity around trainee expectations.

Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications leadership agreed with the suggestions and pledged to address most within a year.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/24/portland-911-call-wait-times-improving-audit-finds/