Crucial help was delayed, once again, by another embarrassing DC911 mistake. At least eight minutes were lost before specialized emergency equipment was dispatched to free an injured person trapped in their car, just a block from the White House. The help was dispatched to the wrong call, six miles away. This occurred because, once again, a dispatcher failed to pay close attention to the basics of their job.

Complete mix-up

Here’s what happened. The Office of Unified Communications dispatched two car crashes, one-minute apart, starting at 7:24 yesterday (Tuesday) morning. The first was at 15^th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. The second was at Suitland Parkway and Alabama Avenue SE. A DC Fire & EMS Department engine company and basic life support ambulance were initially dispatched to each call (radio traffic below).

At 7:30 a.m., the officer in charge of Engine 23, on the scene at 15^th and Constitution NW, reported he had a person trapped in a vehicle. He told a dispatcher to upgrade the assignment to a collision with entrapment. This upgrade is supposed to immediately send a heavy-duty rescue squad and other units to help treat and free the trapped person.

A dispatcher dutifully upgraded the call. There was only one problem. They upgraded the wrong call. They made the wrong choice in the dispatch computer and sent the extra equipment about six miles away to the crash at Suitland Parkway and Alabama Avenue SE. That location is near the DC and Prince George’s County, MD border.

There was also a second problem. No one at DC911 realized they had screwed up this response in a major way.

How dispatchers learned they messed up

Dispatchers didn’t begin to discover their mistake until after a somewhat surprised officer in charge of the engine company at the Suitland Parkway crash began wondering why all of this extra equipment was coming toward him. I imagine that was quite puzzling, considering his crew was dealing with a minor collision with no one trapped or even hurt. At the same time, the officer from Engine 23 began asking about the help that he had requested minutes earlier.

OUC didn’t dispatch the correct help to free the person at 15^th Street and Constitution Avenue NW until 7:38 a.m. How would you feel if you or your loved one, injured and trapped in a crushed vehicle, had to wait an unnecessary extra eight minutes to get the help needed?

The crash was deemed serious enough that shortly after the battalion chief finally dispatched on the correct assignment arrived at the scene, he requested one of the EMS supervisors who carries whole blood. In case you were wondering, that EMS supervisor was correctly dispatched by OUC to 15th and Constitution NW and not the Suitland Parkway crash.

Repeat offenders

While this is not one of the most common errors made at OUC, this is far from the first time OUC has caused serious mistakes and delays in upgrading assignments. My files have a number of similar incidents. Many of them led to chaotic moments on the radio as fire and EMS crews tried to sort out who was going where.

There is some evidence that this also may have happened during a cardiac arrest call on December 2^nd.  I have written about this 911 call on several occasions and testified about it at a recent DC Council hearing (video below). In that case, around 5:15 a,m., OUC upgraded an EMS call on 45^th Street NE that wasn’t a cardiac arrest. At the same time, a call-taker was alerting dispatchers that a person who was home alone and having trouble breathing on 11^th Street NW had suddenly become unresponsive. That information alone is normally reason enough to upgrade such a call. But the 11^th Street call was never upgraded to a cardiac arrest by dispatchers.

While I can’t prove for certain that dispatchers mixed up these two EMS calls, I can prove this about the 11^th Street call: A dispatcher didn’t relay that crucial note from the call-taker to firefighters and medics by radio until 19 minutes into the call, the call wasn’t upgraded until after the patient was found in cardiac arrest by fire and EMS, and that OUC failed to answer radio calls from the same firefighters and medics for four minutes.

Despite all of this, OUC Director Heather McGaffin wrote to the DC Council on April 14^th that “appropriate action was taken by all involved OUC personnel” during the 11^th Street NW cardiac arrest. Of course, there is no mention by McGaffin that the radio wasn’t answered for four minutes, or why the call wasn’t upgraded, or why dispatchers waited so long to relay the crucial message about the patient becoming unresponsive, or what exactly the dispatchers were doing during the early morning hour instead of paying close attention to a cardiac arrest response. You might think that a serious look into such a critical call would answer those questions. Providing those answers is not the OUC way.

Despite offering no details on what her staff did or didn’t do during this call, McGaffin used the opportunity to call out the staff of DC Fire and EMS. She wrote that firefighters and medics didn’t notice the call-taker’s updated messages on the computer terminals in their apparatus. Maybe that’s because the firefighters were standing in front of the apartment door, waiting for confirmation on the address and other details from dispatchers who weren’t answering the radio.

What happens now?

Based on OUC history, absolutely nothing. If the director of the Office of Unified Communications can’t appropriately and candidly address the facts of a cardiac arrest call and provide accountability, how would anyone expect she will do any better with the obvious car crash debacle?

From The Washington Post

DC council members and the public are currently (and rightly) upset that some top Metropolitan Police Department brass were given termination notices in recent days after being accused of altering crime statistics. That’s important stuff. Can’t argue with that.

Yet, no one cares that for the last six years, there is also clear evidence that OUC leadership has been submitting bad data and obviously wrong information to the DC Council about both the number and the details of the mistakes made by DC911 staff. In some of these cases, people died.

In one case, 10 dogs drowned, and people were trapped in rising water over their heads while OUC staff twiddled their thumbs. Council members, outraged by this, promised to get to the bottom of why this happened. It has been almost three years, and they still haven’t. That’s because OUC refused to give them the one document that explains exactly what occurred. Instead, the official record is still a nonsensical cover story provided by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration.

There are receipts

STATter911 still has that document from the District Dogs case. There is also a large file of recordings and other records that prove OUC leaders have long misled the DC Council and the public.

Included in those seven years of files are almost 20 cases where there were 911 mistakes and delays surrounding someone’s death. Like the District Dogs flood, in many of those cases where people died, OUC leaders continue to keep the details covered up. They don’t want you to know what really happened.

Is it possible that knowing the truth about the fudged statistics and information behind repeat and potentially deadly errors at DC’s 911 center to prevent others from being harmed is just as important to the public’s well-being as making sure heads roll in a crime stats scandal? Maybe it’s more important.

I am waiting for the day that someone in charge finally demands the truth from OUC leaders and doesn’t give up until there’s real accountability. I’ve given them a few places to start.