DC911 can’t get out of its own way. Last night, the agency’s staff once again botched two basics of the job – relaying accurate information and understanding the city’s grid system. In doing so, they caused unnecessary address confusion during another reported cardiac arrest response. Luckily, it wasn’t a cardiac arrest. But it was still a serious call that required paramedics. If not for the officer in charge of DC Fire & EMS Engine 16, things likely would have been considerably worse.

This one is a bit confusing. So, follow the timeline and listen to the audio (above) closely.

• 7:50 p.m. – AMR 87 was dispatched to 1428 9^th NW for an overdose. That’s just south of the intersection of 9^th St. & P St. NW.
• 7:52 p.m. – The call was upgraded to a cardiac arrest, sending more units. The new address was 900 P St. NW. That address is only a few doors away, around the corner from 1428 9^th NW. So far, it was all good.
• 7:53 p.m. – The dispatcher working Channel 12, handling EMS calls for Northwest, also initially dispatched the upgraded response as 900 P St. NW, but started the confusion by saying the cross street was “Columbia Road.” That doesn’t compute at all. Columbia Rd. is more than a mile to the north. The correct cross street is “Columbia Street.”
• 7:54 p.m. – There was an address change for this call in the computer. As usual, dispatchers didn’t call on the radio to alert the units in the field to this crucial information. Truck 4’s officer saw it first on the computer in the rig and asked the dispatcher if the new address was 1500 P Street NW. The dispatcher responded, “That’s correct, 1500 P as in Papa Street NW”. That location is six blocks to the west of 9^th & P. The dispatcher was sending the units to a bad address.
• 7:54 p.m. – Engine 16 noticed something in the computer notes that cast doubt that the address is 1500 P. The call notes indicated the person in cardiac arrest was supposed to be at Shiloh Baptist Church. That church is an extremely well-known landmark in DC. Its address is 1500 9^th Street NW. That’s at the intersection of 9^th & P or across the street from the original address of 1428 9^th Street NW.
• 7:55 p.m. – The dispatcher told Engine 16 that Shiloh Baptist Church is at 1500 9^th Street NW. Engine 16 said, “That’s correct. That’s what I said. We’re trying to figure out if we are going to 1500 P or 1500 9^th. The dispatcher answered, “So, they say the patient is across the street.” The good news is that everyone was finally on the same page. There was agreement that the patient was somewhere near the intersection of 9^th & P NW. Unfortunately, OUC wasn’t finished with that bad address of 1500 P Street NW. Read on.
• 7:58 p.m. – Engine 16, after arriving at the location, reported it was not a CPR call.
• 8:04 p.m. – Engine 16 asked the Channel 12 dispatcher twice to change the address for the call to 1500 9^th NW from 1500 P NW, and asked for a paramedic transport unit. The dispatcher acknowledged the request after the second transmission. Did the dispatcher correct the address in the dispatch computer? You can probably figure out the answer to that question yourselves.
• 8:06 p.m. – Medic 1 was dispatched to “the cardiac arrest at 1500 P Street NW.” Nothing about that dispatch is accurate. The nature of the call and the address are both wrong. Apparently, the Channel 12 dispatcher never corrected the address or the type of call in the computer. It’s as if the officer of Engine 16 was talking to himself the whole time.
• 8:09 p.m. – The Channel 12 dispatcher asked Engine 16, “I am just trying to verify the address. You’re at the Shiloh Baptist Church at 1500 9^th Street NW?” After Engine 16 said, “That’s correct”, the dispatcher asked, “Are you on the scene?” Engine 16’s officer kindly and patiently answered again, “That’s correct”, even though he first indicated to OUC they were on the scene 11 minutes earlier and verified the address five minutes earlier. Despite this unnecessary repeat verification, there’s no indication that the dispatcher relayed any of the information to Medic 1. I imagine that they got to the correct address on their own with no help from OUC.

You might think that OUC leadership would be embarrassed by such a performance and be eager to correct these problems. There is no indication that’s the case.

If a dispatcher doesn’t know that 1500 9^th St is at 9^th & P or that 1500 9^th and 1500 P are two different locations, they should be removed from the operations floor until they are retrained. It also shouldn’t take a fire officer calling multiple times for many minutes before a dispatcher updates the computer. This is necessary to prevent later-responding units from being dispatched to the wrong location. These are routine mistakes that are made almost often at OUC.

And then there is the other chronic problem of dispatchers failing to alert fire and EMS by radio of an address change. I documented five similar incidents in just three days last week, and I am sure there were many others that I missed. STATter911 began covering this issue way back in 2020. The fire officer from the incidents in the recording above retired earlier this year, and nothing has changed. OUC’s policy on relaying such important updates seems to be, “It’s not our job.”

A couple of years ago, a top manager at OUC said just that. The person actually yelled at me when I dared to suggest that DC911 dispatchers aren’t very good at updating the units in the field about new information. They angrily told me that it’s the job of firefighters, EMS crews, and police to catch those updates on their computer terminals as they drive down the road to the call. They indicated that dispatchers are too busy to spend time reading and relaying that stuff.

That policy didn’t work so well during a December EMS call. Firefighters and paramedics didn’t receive the update that their patient became unresponsive because they weren’t sitting in front of their computer terminals. They were at an apartment door waiting for someone to open it. That someone was in cardiac arrest on the other side of the door.

A half-century ago, before there were dispatch computers in 911 centers, I learned the basics of emergency communication from a wonderful fire officer named Bob Fuller. Bob is long gone, but to this day, I remember his words, “It’s not a message until it’s confirmed by the person receiving it.”

Here in the 21^st century, those running DC911 show us every day they are perfectly comfortable with their workers routinely ignoring such a basic tenet of the industry. Critical messages – ones whose receipt can mean the difference between someone living or dying – are entered into the dispatch computer each day with the hope that the right people read them. Verbally relaying and getting acknowledgement of such a message is apparently for sissies. It’s absolute madness that the 911 center in our nation’s capital operates this way.