Woman Drowns in Canal After 911 Call

At about 5 a.m. on Feb. 16, 2001 Karla Gutierrez was driving on the Florida Turnpike in West Miami-Date when her car veered off the road, plunged into a canal and sank. The exact timing of the events is unclear, but Gutierrez was able to dial 911 and reach a Miami-Dade County calltaker, and speak for some 3-1/2 minutes before her car submerged. She gave conflicting information about her location, and by the time a police officer noticed skid marks, and divers reached her vehicle some 50 minutes later, she was dead. The incident quite naturally sparked discussions and questions from the victim's family, dispatchers, dispatch training companies and the media.

Gutierrez's fiancé was angry, and claimed the calltaker did not receive sufficient training--he said the unnamed dispatcher should have given Gutierrez instructions on how to escape from the vehicle rather than focusing on questions about her location. The incident resulted in press coverage which, in turn, generated comments from those in the dispatching profession, which eventually appeared in newspapers and on television. The "Dateline NBC" show profiled the incident on Feb. 27th, interviewing a Miami-Date fire captain, the victim's fiancé and Bill Kinch, an employee of Medical Priority Consultants, which markets medical and fire protocol and pre-arrival instruction cards. The incident also sparked the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) to issue a press release about the incident, pointing out that Phase I and II wireless E911 might have helped locate the woman quicker, and for emergency units to arrive faster. We've assembled these links:

Dateline NBC

The "Dateline NBC" show profiled the Gutierrez drowning incident, and covered two basic points--an explanation of how to escape from a submerged vehicle (from a 1996 segment that reporter Len Cannon produced), and an interview with Bill Kinch of the National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch (NAEMD). Much of the second portion of the segment is included verbatim on NBC's Web site.

"All 911 operators are trained first and foremost to get the location of the caller, " Cannon said in the first portion of the segment. "Getting the location is the only way to get help to the person in danger. Excerpts of Gutierrez's 911 call were played in between Cannon's comments. "The other priority is to keep the caller from panicking...which the operator tried, again and again."

"While the 911 operator is still not clear where Karla is....she encourages her to find a way out. [excerpt] All the while the clock is ticking, and Karla's car is going down. [excerpt] Only later would it become clear where Karla's car was. For now, all the dispatcher knew was, the car was sinking."

"It was a rare type of call for 911...a sinking car," Cannon said. "A small window of time...perhaps 3-1/2 minute..for rescue teams to get there. Could Karla find a way to get out of the car. There are things you can do..." The segment then showed the 1996 segment on escaping from a submerged vehicle.

When Len Cannon returned to the present incident, he said, "No one knows exactly what happened to Karla Gutierrez that February morning, but it seems she was overcome by panic." [excerpt] "And before 911 could pin down her location...it was too late."

Cannon said that Gutierrez's death "immediately raised questions about 911 procedures," and whether location should always be the top priority. Gutierrez's fiancé was shown saying, "We're highly disturbed at the poor training this 911 operator had, which meant she was not able to help my fiancé save her life." In this sound bite, he did not criticize the dispatcher who handled the call, but only the training she did--or did not--receive.

• Watch a short clip of the original Dateline video
• Read a NENA press release on the incident
• Read APCO's response to the Dateline story.
• Read Powerphone's advice on handling these types of incidents.

Other notes:

• A portion of NBC's Web transcript is incorrect. It quotes reporter Cannon as saying that last fall, NAEMD "established and offered for free new step-by-step instructions and training to guide operators through emergency calls via cell phones." Actually, according to the videotape that aired, Cannon said it was offered "for a fee."
• Kinch said that only six agencies had purchased the fire protocol cards that NAEMD introduced last September at their annual conference.
• Kinch also said that Miami-Dade County--who handled the rescue and who is already a customer for the NAEMD medical protocols--was coincidentally in preliminary talks to obtain the fire protocols when the accident occurred.
• Prompted by the incident, NAEMD has updated its protocols for such an incident, reporter Cannon said.
• Cannon admitted--twice--that such an incident--a person calling 911 from a wireless phone from a sinking car--was "a rare type of call for 911." Later, he said, "Turns out, most 911 dispatchers have not been trained on how to talk people out of a submerged vehicle, because it is such a rare type of 911 call."
• Cannon came very close to the crux of this incident--at one point he said, "And cell phones have caused a crisis within the 911 community. That's because cell phone calls cannot be automatically traced and the caller's location identified, and cell phones can be used by people anytime, anywhere, increasingly in emergency situations." He hit the target on the issue of location. But he only touched on the issue that wireless phones make it increasingly easy for callers to dial 911 in the midst of an emergency that previously could not have been reported at all. How prepared should dispatchers be for infrequent and rare types of incidents?
• We noticed filler video of the Santa Monica PD comm center during the segment.

The tire tracks of Gutierrez's car veer off the highway	Gutierrez's car is pulled from the canal
Karla Gutierrez and a portion of her 911 call	Gutierrez's fiancé Tony Gomez is critical of the training the dispatcher received
Dateline NBC reporter Len Cannon interviewed Kinch and replayed a 1996 "Dateline" segment that explained how to escape from a submerged vehicle	Bill Kinch, National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch
The NAEMD protocols as shown on the "Dateline NBC" segment	This video of a public safety dispatcher at an unknown agency was used as filler during the Miami segment. Note the APCO protocol cards at the bottom center of the frame.

After the incident, a 911-related Web site asked 267 visitors, "Who do you think was responsible for the Miami incident?" Oddly, the results were: