Here’s a phrase I’ve never heard a DC911 dispatcher say: “DC 295”. That’s not an exaggeration. At DC911/OUC, that very busy, four-mile stretch of highway doesn’t exist. It is ALWAYS erroneously dispatched as Interstate 295. For decades, I-295, travelling north from Oxon Hill, ended in the middle of the old 11thStreet Bridge. It now ends where the highway splits between the I-695 Bridge and DC 295. Despite what OUC dispatchers broadcast on the radio multiple times each day, the interchanges of “I-295 and Pennsylvania Avenue SE”, “I-295 and Benning Road NE” and others don’t exist. I’ve always chalked these constant mistakes up to OUC’s poor training. That assumption changed yesterday morning when I heard a conversation that blew my mind.

A frustrated DC Fire & EMS battalion chief had been calling on the radio for almost 30 minutes with the correct location of a highway crash. No matter how many times he explained it, two different dispatchers couldn’t get it right. The crash was where southbound DC-295 and I-695 meet. It’s a location every dispatcher should know. Despite his many explanations, the chief saw that the dispatch computer still claimed the crash was on “I-295”. He also saw DC police officers that he needed at the scene riding the opposite way and going south on I-295. When challenged, this bizarre explanation came from one of the dispatchers: The computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system won’t accept “DC-295” as a location, only “I-295”. WHAT???

I have so many questions. Is the dispatcher correct? Has this been the problem all of these years? Is the CAD in the Nation’s Capital so wanting that its database has long been missing a high-volume highway that’s the source of multiple 911 calls each day? Is OUC leadership so inadequate that they can’t either put “DC-295” in CAD, or properly train the staff to know the difference between “I-295” and “DC-295”, or do both?

All of this is maddening and disheartening. This may not seem like a big deal, but I can assure you that it speaks volumes about the chaos and constant confusion that emanates daily from DC911. It’s a root cause of mistakes and delays. Mistakes and delays at a 911 center can cost lives.