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Problems with the city's new 911 system

Posted: Jul 14, 2011 9:21 PM
Updated: Jul 15, 2011 3:37 AM


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TUCSON - When there is an emergency seconds count, so you assume when you call 911you are going to get a response fast.

Tucson's 911 system is in question after the death of a 10 year old girl.

The city just upgraded the system, from analog to digital, to make emergency response faster, but many say, there's a deadly glitch.

The system was upgraded on May 25th. Six days later, on June 1st, a nurse from Continental Reserve Urgent Care called 911 about a ten year girl who wasn't breathing.

At 4:01 the nurse first made the call to 911. "833 North Silverbell. I have an unconscious unresponsive respiratory arrest," said the caller.

The operator repeats the address back, "Are you at 833 North Silverbell?"

"Yes, this is Continental Reserve Urgent Care," said the caller.

The wrong address just short one 3.

The nurse calls back five and half minutes later.

"Emergency dispatcher what is the address of the injured?" said the operator.

"8333 Continental.. or North Silverbell," said the caller.

That call the nurse states the right address, but the operator does not repeat the change.

Three minutes later she calls back.

"We've called and it's been over 7 minutes and they still aren't here and they are right across the street from us," said the caller.

The ambulance was sent downtown instead of to the facility in Marana.

Since the new 911 system launch, operators have seen problems like dropped calls, less supervisor monitoring for accuracy of calls, and the address of incoming calls failing to pop up on the operator's screen.

The city would not comment specifically on what went wrong in this case.

"The safety of the public has not been compromised and any time you have a software implementation you're going to have issues," said Tucson City Manager Mike Letcher.

City council member Steve Kozachik said their troubleshooting is coming at the expense of safety.

"There are allegations right now, credible allegations, that the new system at least played a part in the death of at least one person. That's unconscionable. And for people to be talking, oh well we have to be protecting our liability interest that's just unacceptable," said Kozachik.

Michael Graham with the city had this to say about the June 1st case:

"The incident has been reviewed and the dispatcher involved was terminated for failure to follow procedures."

They city also added they still remain below a six minute response time average and they believe most of the problems have now been fixed.

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