A horrifying 911 bungle may have cost a young boy his life yesterday, sources told The NY Post.
Firefighters and medics rushed to a call of a 6-year-old boy in cardiac arrest at 277 Ave. C at 9:04 a.m. But they were sent to Avenue C in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan.
By the time paramedics reached the boy’s apartment at 9:22 a.m. — 18 minutes after the family’s 911 call — the child was dead, the sources said. The boy’s name was not immediately released.
A spokesman for the FDNY said the incident is “under review.”
The NYPD said it received a 911 call from a hysterical woman who had given her address, but not the borough. Cops said that the operator tried to establish the cross streets, but the caller was too distraught to respond.
EMTs arrived at the Brooklyn address at 9:10 am — and determined they were in the wrong place.
A dispatcher called the incoming number back and asked the mom where she was. “She said, ‘I’m here, I’m here . . . he’s bleeding from the nose,” and pleaded with them to hurry,” a source said.
The dispatcher finally determined she was in Manhattan.
(Source: http://www.nypost.com/)
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7 Responses
The mother should have called Hatzoloh.
Hindsight is 20/20 but I don’t understand why 911 doesn’t have the ability to know where the call is coming from especially what borough its coming from.
People don’t realize that 911 is not a local regional receiver. It is a central call center and you have to be very specific.
B”H for us, Hatzolah has a caller ID system that identifies the address. It is a shame that the 911 system is not that up to date. But please don’t make chizuk of this situation it is a tragedy.
The NY Post doesn’t indicate what the ethnicity of the child/family was. If they were not part of the
heimishe community at large, they might not have known about Hatzoloh to call.
Even so, while their phone number has a high profile among heimishe,it is not readily acquired,
Hatzoloh is specifically not listed in the directory services. Could of, Would of, Should Of.
As a Hatzolah member I can tell you that this problem can happen to any agency. Very often people call from their cell phones rather than house phones because the cell is usually on them. Also, computers are far from perfect. While we do have a system that pinpoints an address based on the phone number I assure you, it’s nowhere near perfect. We do the best we can but sadly sometimes things happen.
You also must keep in mind the speed at which all of this is going on. The patient becomes ill, the family member runs to the phone, blurts out the info, the dispatcher deciphers that… it happens in a matter of seconds. It’s impossible to comprehend the feeling unless you’ve answered those phones. The dispatcher is responsible to get the resources to the patient to save a life. The mind is trying to move as fast as possible… add that to a computer error, and you’ve got a bad situation.
I’m very sorry to have heard this story…
#2 Mark –
The NYC 911 system of course can see where a call is coming from; they have the highest level of caller ID for landlines (bypasses the caller ID spoof methods).
This was either a case of:
1) Call coming from a non-e911 equipped system (Skype, some VOIP carriers)
or, more likely:
2) Poor communication from the 911 call center to EMS
#3 Aries
Hazolah and 911 have the same caller ID system. No better, no worse.
The article’s header is incorrect – it’s not a “911 Mixup” (implying it’s the 911 center’s fault).
The mother is to blame, regrettably, for not answering the operator’s questions.
On the other hand, I feel that in this case, it might have been appropriate to send two ambulances – one to each address, and risk a false trip rather than risking a life. Had I been the operator, I would (in case this would have been possible/permitted!) have sent two ambulances.