A Louisville EMS medical first responder prepares for his shift. Byard Duncan stepped out for a run and saw a brush fire spreading near his home in Oakland, California.He called 911.But, to his surprise, he was put on hold.“I just thought that was wild,” Duncan said in a recent interview with th e Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.Duncan is a reporter for Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. That 911 call piqued a curiosity that led to a recent report, published late last month, that takes a wider look at how often 911 dispatchers are putting people on hold.Duncan found that nearly two dozen of the nation’s largest cities fail to answer enough 911 calls fast enough. Louisville is one of them.According to the National Emergency Number Association, at least 90% of 911 calls should be answered within 15 seconds. This is considered a national standard. In Louisville, Duncan found dispatchers answered 86% of calls within that timeframe in 2024 and 2025.“Which is really brushing up against that standard, but not quite there,” he said.In each of those years, 911 dispatchers in Louisville recorded more than 600,000 calls, Duncan found.In an emailed statement, Jody Meiman, the executive director of Louisville Metro Emergency Services, said many factors can impact annual call‑answer averages, such as major incidents, severe weather, and the extremely high volume of callers using cell phones that call all at once about the same incident."NENA standards require performance to be measured monthly, not annually, and Louisville MetroSafe has met the national 90% benchmark every month this year. We continue to strengthen staffing, improve technology, increase public education regarding proper use of 911, and streamline call‑processing procedures to ensure this positive monthly trend continues,” he said.Duncan’s reporting found a key underlying issue that leads to a slow pick-up time in 911 centers nationwide is understaffing. He said up to 85% of dispatch centers across the country are understaffed. For the workers on the job, the hours are long and the work can be intensely traumatic with a relentless call volume, he said.He talked to dispatchers across the country in the course of his reporting and “didn’t meet a single one that wasn’t incredibly dedicated to the job.”A 2023 report from WDRB News found Louisville’s 911 system was about 25% below staffing capacity.Duncan said the problem of being put on hold is most common in larger cities where dispatchers get more calls.In Lexington, for instance, he found nearly 98% of 911 calls are answered within 10 seconds, well above the national standard. In contrast to Louisville, dispatchers in Lexington answered about 200,000 calls in 2025.During an emergency, seconds matter, Duncan said. And when he stepped out for that run and saw the brush fire growing in intensity, he made a “cardinal mistake” that experts told him about as he reported this issue — he kept calling.He said each time he’d hang up to dial again, he would inadvertently create more work for the dispatchers because they then needed to call back every abandoned call.The advice he got was to stay on the line, even if you’re on hold, even if it’s a dire situation.Eventually, he said he heard sirens in the distance and a dispatcher called him back.“And I said ‘yea, I’m just calling about the fire,’” he said. “And they said, ‘yea, you’re one of many.’” ...read more read less