By Jeremy Redmon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Nearly 17 minutes passed between a May 9 call to the city’s 911 center and firefighters’ arrival at a southwest Atlanta home fire where children had been at a birthday party minutes earlier.
The National Fire Protection Association calls on fire departments to respond within six minutes to a fire or medical emergency call at least 90 percent of the time. The standard allows a minute for a 911 dispatcher to take the call, another minute for firefighters to suit up and four minutes for the first unit to arrive.
City officials blame the May 9 delay on glitches in their 911 system, a heavy call volume that day and staff shortages. Once they were finally dispatched, firefighters arrived in 5 minutes, 17 seconds, said Fire Rescue Department spokesman Bill May.
Neighbors who saw the fire say it could have been contained quickly if firefighters had been dispatched sooner. They said no one was injured. But the brick house with green shutters on Dollar Mill Road is a total loss, owner Courtney Martin said.
“This is Atlanta, Georgia. This is not some backwoods town in nowhere, USA,” said Martin, an attorney, who lives in College Park but had planned to move with her husband into the house on Dollar Mill Road. “There is absolutely no excuse for it.”
It was unclear last week what started the fire. The woman who rented the home from Martin, whom Martin identified as April Mitchell, could not be reached for comment last week.
City officials disclosed the following information last week:
* Atlanta aims to answer 911 calls within 10 seconds. But on May 9, its 911 center kept someone city officials believe was the first caller about the Dollar Mill Road fire on hold for seven minutes before that person finally hung up.
* Less than a minute after the first caller hung up, a city 911 operator picked up a call about the fire from a Cobb County operator. City officials say it’s possible a glitch in their 911 system routed the call to Cobb or that a cellphone tower bounced the call. Dollar Mill Road sits a short distance from the county line.
* Six workers were manning Atlanta’s 911 center at the time of that fire, when 10 or more is optimal, according to Miles Butler, the center’s director. The center has 20 vacant positions, and all workers are taking recurring furloughs. Atlanta officials acknowledged in January that a severe shortage in 911 operators contributed to delays responding to a fire that destroyed a Grant Park home that month. Six operators were also on duty that night.
Martin’s neighbors say the city’s 911 center kept them on hold 15 to 20 minutes on the day of the fire. Butler denied their assertions. He said the city’s 911 system glitches have been fixed and the city is trying to recruit more 911 center workers. He called the May 9 incident “regrettable.” Butler said, “We try to do everything we can to ensure this kind of stuff doesn’t happen.”
Butler said Atlanta answered 88,075 911 calls last month in 12 seconds, on average. The city, however, is refusing to make a database of its emergency response information available as requested under Georgia’s Open Records Act on Jan. 29 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The city is citing privacy reasons for rejecting the AJC’s request. State law requires public records containing private information must be released after private information is redacted.
Meanwhile, neighbors on Dollar Mill Road are decrying budget cuts that have socked the Fire Rescue Department. Beset with furloughs, layoffs and the loss of many positions, the city started temporarily shutting down ladder trucks at certain fire stations last year. It’s unclear whether the budget cuts affected the response to the Dollar Mill fire.
But neighbors and the president of the local firefighters union say the number of firefighters who initially arrived was insufficient. The first engine to arrive on Dollar Mill Road carried three firefighters, said Addison Williams, who lives next door to the house that burned. One went into the basement to fight the fire before others arrived, Williams said. The National Fire Protection Association says at least four firefighters should be on a fire apparatus.
“He could have died in there,” Williams said.
Like Williams, Lt. Jim Daws, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 134, said he was concerned.
“You just had a series of breakdowns, mainly due to understaffing your public safety agencies. And the result was a failed fire operation,” Daws said.
In all, three engines, three ladder trucks and two battalion chief vehicles ultimately reported to the fire, Fire Rescue Department spokesman Bill May said. May said last week he was looking into how many firefighters initially arrived.
“From everything I heard, it went well” May said, “They really worked smoothly as a team to get water on there as soon as they did.”
Council member C.T. Martin, whose district includes Dollar Mill Road, was critical of the city’s response to the May 9 fire.
“That is incompetency and ridiculous that that happened,” said Martin. “We have been for some time working on trying to get the bugs out of the system.”
Staff writers Christian Boone and John Perry contributed to this article.
Copyright 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution