Computer cited in rescue-dispatch mix-up
By Sallie James and Lisa J. Huriash
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Copyright 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
PLANTATION, Fla. -- A man who collapsed in a city park lay dying on a basketball court waiting for paramedics for almost 10 minutes because rescue workers were dispatched to the wrong location, according to 911 tapes obtained Friday by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Despite repeated explanations from 911 callers Sunday that someone had fallen ill at Deicke Park near Nob Hill Road and Sunrise Boulevard, a dispatcher sent rescue workers to Deicke Auditorium at 5701 Cypress Road, a city facility more than five miles to the east.
Police are blaming the mistake on a new $2.5 million computer system that provided dispatch with the wrong address.
The dispatcher who took the call had also only been on the job six months, police said.
Mark Zimmer, 55, a stay-at-home father of two boys, died later at Westside Regional Medical Center.
A relative said Friday he doesn’t blame the city because the medical examiner’s office told the family Zimmer, of Plantation, would have died anyway of a heart related problem.
“I think the important thing to us is they have a new system and it didn’t work, and now they have been able to learn a lesson for free from our standpoint,” said Steve Gomberg, Zimmer’s brother-in-law.
Average response time for Plantation firefighters is just under four minutes, said Fire Department spokesman Joel Gordon, a battalion chief.
Police officials, who handle the city’s 911 dispatch system, said the mistake happened when a dispatcher typed in “Deicke” and got the wrong address on the computer screen.
Plantation Police Chief Larry Massey said the dispatcher who took the call was not to blame. Police declined to name her.
“She’s a good employee,” Massey said. “She was a wreck after this. We handle 200,000 incoming calls a year. We got this one wrong. My heart really goes out to the [Zimmer] family ... If we could go back and do it differently, we know we would.”
When the 911 call came in at 12:23 p.m., dispatch initially sent a rescue unit from a station at 5200 W. Broward Boulevard to Deicke Auditorium on the east side of the city.
Another caller to 911 was told by a second dispatcher that they were responding to an emergency at Deicke Auditorium.
“Not at Deicke Auditorium! Deicke Park!” the caller hollered. “Somebody needs to know what they’re doing over there and get rescue over here now.”
Then at 12:27 p.m., after dispatchers realized the mistake, a rescue unit from 901 N. Pine Island Road on the west side of the city responded to the incident, arriving at almost 12:33 p.m.
Plantation resident David Lipson, a former Sunrise police officer who helped administer CPR until paramedics arrived, was outraged by the delayed response time.
“I was yelling ... where the hell is the damn rescue?” Lipson said. Lipson said he called dispatch himself to give them directions.
“We’re making sure the system performs as it is supposed to and this never happens again,” Massey said.