On Sept. 23rd a woman driving home from work at 5 a.m. drowned when her car was swept off a residential road in Gwinnett County (Geo.). Seydi Burciaga died as floodwaters from torrential rains filled her car, which had drifted off the roadway, past the backyards of homes and into a field of trees near a school. She was on the telephone with a county 911 dispatcher for 16 minutes before the telephone went dead. Arriving police and fire units couldn’t spot her car and rescue her. About two hours later the water receded enough, and it became light enough for rescuers to see the car and find her body. Now the logging tape of the 911 call is available, along with the CAD print-outs from the incident. Both seem to show the calltaker properly handled the call by obtaining critical information and advising Burciaga, “Do whatever you can to get out of your vehicle.” At about five minutes into the 911 call, the calltaker noted in the CAD comments, “****FEMALE ALMOST DROWNING***.” The conversation turned desperate as the dispatcher told her, “Don’t tell me you can’t,” and telling Burciaga to look outside for anything recognizable that might help firefighters locate her. At this point the CAD notations read: “WATER IS UP TO HER NECK NOW,” and then “LOST PHONE.” The calltaker dialed back Burciaga’s telephone, but it went to voice mail. Download (pdf) the CAD print-outs here, read more about the incident here, and listen to the 911 call. here

A series of EMD, priority assignment and ambulance staging mistakes by Toronto dispatchers and paramedics ended with the death of a man from what the coroner says was a heart attack. It took paramedics 38 minutes to finally arrive in the hallway of an apartment building where Jim Hearst had collapsed. Another tenant reported Hearst’s condition, but mentioned that, “he might be drunk.” That remark ended the dispatcher’s standard EMD questioning–for some reason–and for the call to be classified as a lower priority. The responding paramedic crew stopped about two blocks away from the building and waited for police, who didn’t arrive for another 29 minutes. Five employees were given unpaid suspensions of from 10 to 17 days, city EMS officials said, and will receive additional training. Read more here. Update: Download (pdf) a just-released ministry report on the incident, with a timeline and recommendations. [editorial]

Editorial

The provincial report on the response delay is full of dates, times, personnel IDs and other specific facts. But it’s perhaps better to read the report, digest it and then ponder exactly what happened, taking a much wider view. When you do, you can spot a basic flaw in the EMD system and the system of policies and procedures that have been set up by Toronto’s EMS system. That flaw is: strictly following a set of procedures can send you down a path filled with mistakes. EMD or any other set of protocols must be accompanied by an intelligent, free-thinking person who can interpret what is occurring, and pursue questions that are outside of or beyond the protocol. Even though the investigation focused on how policies and procedures were followed, or not, it also revealed how the dispatch and EMS personnel were thinking “inside the box,” and failed to use common thinking about the situation. I should also note that there were mistakes of notation by the calltaker, and of inexperience by the ambulance crew.

Read the investigative report, analyze it without using any type of EMD protocols, and decide if you would ask questions differently and reach a different result for what was entered in CAD. Sometimes an incident is much more simple than it appears when protocols are used.

The Obama administration has stepped into the debate over the future of spectrum management on Monday when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke before the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Denver, telling the audience that he supports removing the 700 MHz allocation of spectrum known as D Block from a federal auction. The D Block was put up for auction by the FCC to meet a Congressional mandate, but the spectrum failed to receive sufficient bids. In his speech, Holder argued that “new approaches” to law enforcement, “help us augment the traditionally reactive approach to law enforcement with one that can actually prevent crime before it even occurs.” He mentioned crime mapping and forensics as two areas of interest. Holder then told the group, “In this regard let me be clear on one point—I strongly support removing the D Block spectrum from auction so that it can be allocated directly to our nation’s public safety officers.” He added, “It is long past time to build the nationwide interoperable communications network we so desperately need in order to keep our nation safe during emergencies. Let’s get it done!” In the original auction, the winning bidder would have had to create a nationwide public safety communications network, and was burdened with other requirements that potential bidders didn’t want to tackle. The FCC is still debating what to do with the spectrum, and hasn’t decided if another auction for the 700 MHz frequencies will be held. Read Holder’s entire speech here.

A Phoenix (Ariz.) homeowner’s 911 call to police is the primary evidence presented in a civil suit filed by the caller and his family against the police department, claiming an officer mistaken shot the man and the department then tried to cover up the error. Anthony Arambula was holding a burglary suspect at gunpoint and was talking to dispatcher, while outside police were already looking for the intruder after he fired shots and broke into a nearby home. Arambula says his wife warned a sergeant outside that he was holding the intruder at bay, and that his gun was always pointed at the suspect. But police say Arambula pointed the gun at them, prompting an officer to fire six shots. Much of the lawsuit is based on conversations that were picked up by the logging recorder for the 911 call. Read a full account of the lawsuit and incident here.

The national Emergency Alerting System (EAS) is an important tool for notifying the public of critical situations, but a federal examination of the system found that it has “longstanding weaknesses that limit its effectiveness.” According to the General Accountability Office (GAO), the EAS doesn’t fulfill today’s communications needs, and despite some attention to improvement by FEMA, there are many technical and other issues to bring the system into the 21st century. Among the problems noted by the GAO are no geo-targeting of message recipients, no redundancy and lack of capacity. Read the GAO materials: report (pdf) / testimony (pdf) / stakeholder survey.

Indiana State Police detectives have arrested a Mitchell (Ind.) police dispatchers on charges that he had photos of a naked 13 year-old girl on his cellular phone. Isaac Terrell, 23, is facing pornography possession charges and could receive up to three years in jail if convicted. State police say they received a tip about the photos in July. According to police, Terrell knew the girl and he allegedly sent messages to her asking for nude photos of her. Terrell was arrested on Tuesday. He is the son of the city’s Mayor Dan Terrell. The city’s attorney advised the police department to re-assign Isaac Terrell to another job while the incident is investigated, but he remains on the payroll.

Federal legislation expired today that in Dec. 2004 promised to allocate up to $1.25 billion for local comm center 911 upgrades, but which never materialized. Instead, Congress appropriated just $41.3 million for local agencies to spend on Phase II or IP-based upgrades, less than four percent of the amount Congress intended. The bill was optimistically called the “ENHANCE 911 Act” when it was passed as agencies needed funding for Phase II upgrades. But every year after the bill was signed by President George W. Bush, none of the annual maximum of $250 million was ever appropriated by Congress, despite support by the E9-1-1 Caucus, public safety associations and local agencies. Finally, in 2007 Congress approved about $41 million, and just last week specific grant awards were announced. Lately, several members of Congress have drafted legislation to extend the original Act, but none of the proposals has been introduced in Congress. Now, because of other legislation and the Congressional schedule, it’s unlikely that an extension will be introduced or passed this year. (more…)

A plan by Allegany County (Md.) officials to reduce the annual payroll of the county’s 911 center received a set-back when the union dispatchers voted 16-3 not to accept a plan that would take away some holiday pay. County officials have been asking unions to accept furloughs to help meet a budget deficit. However, forcing dispatchers to take mandatory days off isn’t practical. So instead, the county proposed that dispatchers not receive pay for a certain number of holidays. The savings seems minimal, according to union officials. They note that 34 of the county’s 45 correctional officers voted to give up pay for two holidays, netting just $23,000 towards a $2 million budget shortfall. Read more about the county’s efforts here.

Quincy (Mass.) 911 dispatcher Mike Bowes received the call of a lifetime Monday night—a caller who turned out to be his neighbor reported that Bowes’ house had exploded and was on fire. After that first call, dozens of other callers dialed 911 to report the flames, including Bowes’ 68 year-old mother Elizabeth, who escaped along with Bowes’ father Donald. Bowes worked for about five minutes, officials said, before he was relieved and driven to the fire scene. Bowes’ cousin is a Quincy firefighter, and helped other firefighters carry out personal belongings before they were damaged. However, nearly everything was destroyed. Fire investigators say the fire originated in the garage, and the explosions were caused by propane tanks. Read more about the fire and watch an interview with Bowes here. Watch a TV video news report here. Update: Bowes appeared on NBC’s “Today” show to recall the incident. An assistance fund has also been established: Eastern Bank c/o Bowes Family Fund, 731 Hancock St., Quincy MA 02170, or you can send a Wal-Mart or Target gift card to Quincy PD, 1 Sea St., Quincy, MA, 02169.

The federal 911 coordination agency has issued a 93-page plan for migrating to the the nation’s next-generation, a potentially landmark document that outlines the importance of having an IP-based system and setting how it could be implemented. The National E9-1-1 Implementation Coordination Office issued the report about six months later than planned, and acknowledged that there are “challenges to overcome,” noting the American public now expects total access to 911 regardless of location or type of communications device. “Yet, even with the devices that can access 9-1-1 now—landline, wireless, and voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones—service is inconsistent across the United States.” The Office warned that, “Without concerted national leadership and coordination, this disparity will only grow as consumers adopt new voice, text and video applications and local 9-1-1 Authorities cobble together solutions to access the antiquated 9-1-1 system one technology at a time.” The report also noted that funding, institutional and technical issues must be addressed, “if anything more than isolated and fragmented pockets of IP-enabled 9-1-1 capabilities are to be deployed.” Download (pdf) the full report here.

The Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) has published an audit of the federal Government Emergency Telecommunications Service (GETS), designed to allow priority telecom services for emergency and other officials, and found that it’s operating effectively, but needs to focus on future plans to meet more advanced technology. GETS has over 227,000 subscribers that include city, county and state emergency officials, including mayors, police and fire chiefs, emergency preparedness directors and EMS administrators. Another 93,000 subscribers have similar accounts on the Wireless Priority System (WPS) for making emergency cellular calls. In its 71-page audit report, the GAO noted that the average rate of GETS/WPS call completion is usually over 95%, even for major incidents such as Hurricane Katrina. The agency also concluded that the GETS/WPS program should improve performance measurement efforts to better judge how they can improve. Download (pdf) the full report here.

Officials say that the response to a July domestic disturbance was handled correctly, but questions are being raised after an 18 year-old driver was killed by a Calvert County deputy who was responding to the incident at 110 mph in a 45 mph zone, unaware that the victim had told a dispatcher her angry husband might have already left the house. Rachael Campbell was killed when her car was struck by Dep. C. Wayne Wells’ patrol car. He was responding to the Priority 1 incident, reported as an angry husband kicking in the door to his wife’s house and threatening her. While Wells responded, the victim told a sheriff’s dispatcher that her husband might have left. That information wasn’t relayed to Wells, and three minutes later the collision occurred–Campbell’s car was destroyed and it caught on fire. Well’s patrol car overturned. Comm center director Jackie Vaughan said dispatchers didn’t believe the information changed the situation. However, an attorney for the Campbell family believes the dispatchers erred in not telling Wells what the woman had said. The family is planning a lawsuit over the incident, but said they’re more interested in reform. Ironically, Campbell was in the sheriff’s Explorer program, and was known by many of the agency’s deputies. Read more here.

A Congressional committee on Thursday heard testimony from several public safety officials about the development of an interoperable broadband network, trying to complete “unfinished business” that dates back to the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Specifically, the committee was interested in hearing feedback on several newly-offered proposals on how to assign 10 MHz of spectrum in the so-called D Block, which failed to attract sufficient bids in an auction last year. Among those testifying were William Bratton, chief of the LAPD, Jason Barbour, past-president of NENA, Stacey Black of AT&T and Brian Fontes, CEO of NENA. Read all of their testimony and watch video of the hearings here.

A woman driving in Gwinnett County (Geo.) was swept off a residential street that became suddenly flooded from heavy rains, and emergency units could not locate and reach her before her car sank and she was drowned. Seydi Burciaga stayed relatively calm during the 16-minute call, which eventually ended when water filled the last possible space in her Nissan Quest van. The unnamed Gwinnett County dispatcher who answered the 911 call immediately recognized Burciaga’s peril and worked quickly to identify her precise location. But in the end, arriving police and fire units were unable to see the car off the roadway, and later rushing water, barbed wire fences and trees blocked any access to the vehicle. Read more about the incident and read a transcript of the 911 call here. (more…)

Officials in Neenah (Wisc.) are investigating the handling of a fatal hit-and-run accident in a Wal-Mart parking lot that sent officers looking for the wrong car, and ending with the suicide death of the actual driver of the vehicle. Police say a 56 year-old woman was struck and dragged by a light-colored Ford Econoline van, and the vehicle sped off. The first 911 caller reached a Winnebago County sheriff’s dispatcher, and gave accurate information about the suspect’s vehicle. A second caller was agitated and gave no description. But a third caller did have a description–he described the wrong vehicle, one that sped off in pursuit of the actual suspect. Police are unsure if the incorrect description meant they missed the vehicle as they responded. Police located the suspect’s home and van two days later. While the officer was at his home, he received word from deputies in Portage County that they had found the suspect dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Read more and listen to the 911 calls here.