By Lela Garlington
The Commercial Appeal
GERMANTOWN, Tenn. — While the other firefighters were asleep last Wednesday night, Lt. Buddy Wheeler sat in his office checking his e-mails at Germantown Fire Station No. 2.
He had already locked the station’s front door at about 9 p.m. He never heard the knock at the door.
Shortly before 10 p.m., a Germantown 911 dispatcher called and told Wheeler a woman had used the station’s emergency 911 phone at 8925 Dogwood and her husband needed help outside.
The woman had told dispatchers that her husband was having chest and stomach pains and difficulty breathing.
“I’m at the Dogwood Fire Station. Do you have an ambulance there?” she asked. “I’m standing outside.”
Wheeler woke the crew and let the woman and her husband inside the station.
“I was shocked. It’s the first time it has happened to us on my shift,” Wheeler said.
Reached at home Tuesday, the husband declined to talk about the incident, but without that red phone mounted outside the station, firefighters might have never heard their knocks.
Germantown installed the emergency 911 phones at each of its four fire stations almost a decade ago as a backup for people who need assistance.
A tragic mishap at a county fire station outside of Millington prompted the emergency 911 phone installation in 2001. Early one morning in late December 2000, an asthma sufferer told his wife to take him to the fire station 2 miles away from their Woodstock home. But the couple couldn’t rouse the sleeping firefighters after several minutes and went for help elsewhere. The man ultimately died.
“I don’t want anybody to show up at a fire station and not get help,” Germantown Fire Chief Dennis Wolf said. “They can use that phone to summon help.”
The phones outside each of the fire stations are rarely used in light of the prevalence of cell phones.
Still, Wolf said, “I don’t intend to get rid of them. The phone is tied into a land line.” That means a dispatcher can see a Germantown address pop up on the computer screen and know exactly where the call is coming from, unlike when a cell phone is used.
Even if the station’s crew is on a call elsewhere, Wolf said a nearby fire station could answer the call.
Because a cell phone triggers a signal from a cell phone tower, Wolf said such a call could go to the 911 center in Memphis or Collierville instead of Germantown.
Wheeler was glad he and the crew were at the station instead of out on another run. He hopes residents will continue calling 911 from their homes. “We’ll come to you,” he said. “That’s what we are in the business for.”
Copyright 2010 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.