FDNY 911 foulup left woman in street for hour

[joetnymedic 43]

911 foulup left woman in street for hour

BY JONATHAN LEMIRE

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 11:34 PM

An 88-year-old woman who collapsed on a busy midtown street had to wait nearly an hour for an FDNY ambulanceto arrive because it had been mistakenly dispatched from Staten Island, the Daily News has learned.

NY Daily News Aritcle

Edited June 12, 2008 by x635
Edited to comply with Copyright Laws and Forum Policirs

[joetnymedic 43]

Hey WAS - kinda reminds me of a certain dispatch to the "basement" of "Briarcliff Manor". Not to knock things, but both incidents go to show why dispatch systems should be local.

Joe T.

[smwells 7]

No excuse...

Last time I checked Manhattan is 26+ miles long.. If they didn't know where it was located why dispatch it to midtown? I am sure the system (guess ) that it shows an area the vehicle is located/stationed (harlem, westside, battery park, etc)

Would a truck down at wall street normally be sent to a job on 55th street?

Did NYPD ask for a status, while dodging the traffic??

Did another unit get free in the 51 minutes it took for this one to get there?

[ny10570 745]

I know nothign about this incident firsthand, but to help short cut a lot of the speculation it is extremely unlikely the crew was lost in Manhattan. From New Dorp on SI to Bellevue is about 25 minutes. 55 and Lex is another 20 blocks and this was after 3pm when all the schools are out and workers are starting to hit the street. A 50 minute drive to the job is not unreasonable. A very reasonable scenario is that the unit was sitting "89" at their regular assigned location. When a borough runs out of units and units are redeployed the units to be redeployed are done so by RCC. RCC reassigns the unit to the new borough and designates a new cross street location. If the unit did not change their signal from "89" they would now show up in the system at their newly assigned cross street location even though they are still sitting in SI. So the Manhattan dispatcher sees this unit show up sends the job out and is too busy to hear the unit explain that they are severely extended since BLS are technically not allowed to be extended (thats a whole other story). They would be told to "do their best" and so away they go. As for PD sitting there for nearly an hour with this woman, the PD dispatcher would be able to see that a unit had been assigned. To get an ETA they send a message over to EMS who if they have the time to do it will ask the unit for an ETA. ETA's are not a priority and for a non-life threatening call type would probably be ignored on such a busy afternoon.

Now for two quick related anecdotes. I was redeployed to Harlem from Throggs Neck in the Bronx and seconds later assigned to an injury at 145 and Amsterdam in Harlem. Different traffic conditions and I have a bit of a led foot. Made it in 14 minutes so no story for the papers.

The other was another extremely busy day and a glitch in the system put a job in Riverdale right next to me all the way down in Soundview at White Plains and Randall Av. Dispatcher was too busy to hear me and the ALS try and explain we were at the wrong end of the borough for this chest pain call. Luckily a heads up unit and Lt were listening and took the job in themselves.

smwells, to answer your questions...

system only shows your actual status when "available outside battalion" (98) or "available inside battalion" (97). When you're at you assigned location (89) no matter where you actually are the system puts you at your cross street.

PD asking for updates probably only got "a unit has been assigned" at least thats what we get when we're waiting for PD.

Another unit getting free wouldn't have changed anything unless someone specifically looked into that job. Once a unit is assigned a job the job sort of goes away. The only time that changes is when a higher priority job pops up in which case the unit would be pulled off the lower priority assignment. There is check to keep track of units in that every 10 minutes from when you're assigned to when you arrive on scene a light flashes and the dispatcher is suppose to get a verbal update on your status, either on scene or still responding. Why this didn't catch this mess I don't know.

Edited June 11, 2008 by ny10570

[SRS131EMTFF 471]

This happened to my grandmother a few days ago.....if it is the same story she is not 88 but 78 and was on 61st and Madison. she fainted in the street and it took the bus 45 minutes once they were called to get there. My father works in White Plains and got to the hospital closest to her a good 15 minutes before the ambulance got to the hospital.

Edited June 11, 2008 by bvfdjc316

[ny10570 745]

Yep, and its going to happen again and again. They're short EMT's and have had to cut back on units assigned to beaches that helped prevent unnecessary transports and saved time with the necessary ones. This weekend they were down quite a few ambulances per tour and had a couple of substantial fires, a parade, and 20 block long party sucking units out of the system while handling well over 4000 jobs each day compared to a sumer average of around 3600.

[ny10570 745]

Some more info on the mess in NYC... http://wcbstv.com/seenon/ambulance.emts.nyc.2.746133.html

[smwells 7]

Thanks ny10570, I thought they had a better system of actual location, verus thier default location.

[20y2 43]

Thanks ny10570, I thought they had a better system of actual location, verus thier default location.

They do, every ambulance in the 911 system has a GPS box/computer in the vehicle. However the system is far from foolproof.

[CPAGE 2]

I can tell you they know where every NYPH ambulance is at all times. I know one of the unit's PAR is upper Manhattan (Inwood) they had to go over the 225 st and Broadway bridge into the Bronx as soon as they got into the Bronx they got hit with bronx jobs.

[M' Ave 1,466]

No excuse...

Last time I checked Manhattan is 26+ miles long.. If they didn't know where it was located why dispatch it to midtown? I am sure the system (guess ) that it shows an area the vehicle is located/stationed (harlem, westside, battery park, etc)

Would a truck down at wall street normally be sent to a job on 55th street?

Did NYPD ask for a status, while dodging the traffic??

Did another unit get free in the 51 minutes it took for this one to get there?

Boy....you musta checked before that pesky ice age changed our geography! From the very tip of Inwood to the Battery, Manhattan is 12 miles long.

NYC EMS is VERY on top of thier units. Each is tracked with GPS and they are constantly asked (almost forcefully) for hurried status updates and hospital turn-arounds. The city is, indeed short medics and EMTs.

As for the dispatch being local comment; how does this apply? The city is dispatched by boro. How much more local do you think it should get? Do you think that every EMS station Police Precinct and Firehouse should be a 911 site? I don't understand how that applies.

The last way to look at it is this: Why is this news? Because it's incredibly ODD!