Dispatch at fault

This morning's headline in the Hernando Times "Dispatch at fault for death" brought to light a very real problem in our county with emergency dispatch calls to 911. Let me first say, my deepest sympathy goes out the family that lost their family member on Tuesday in this 911 mix up.

This is not an isolated incident of a 911 mishap though and I can speak from experience. About a year and a half ago I had to call 911 for my husband who was in distress. When he began choking on food lodged in his windpipe so I immediately called for help on the 911 line. Thank goodness my husband did not panic and was getting limited air to his lungs or my family would have been in the same position of the family written about in the newspaper this morning.

After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, I called 911 a second time and was told to be patient it had only been seven minutes from my last call. At this point, my husband's fatigue from gasping for air was becoming more than he could handle so I screamed into the phone to have someone help me. I, then dropped the phone and began beating my husband on the back with both of my fists when he could no longer breath on his own. He finally able to dislodge the food in his wind pipe from me beating on his back. I picked up the phone again to speak to the 911 dispatcher and he asked if I still needed an ambulance. My response was no but please get the rescue squad to our home as soon as possible to check my husband who was still clearly in distress from the incident.

To make a long story short, it took the rescue squad 11.5 minutes to arrive at our home due to human errors in the 911 dispatch system. My first call was logged as an emergency at the sheriff's department, then transferred to the Spring Hill Fire Rescue, who dispatched the Hernando County Fire Rescue instead of Tri-County Volunteer Fire Rescue. Our first responders, Tri-County Volunteer Fire Rescue, who cover the Nobleton area were never notified of my call for help. On arriving at our home, the first comment from the EMS personnel of the Hernando County Fire Rescue was what happened to Tri-County?

The next morning, I telephoned the Sheriff's Department and Spring Hill Fire Rescue for the dispatch logs to find out why Tri-county never made it to our home. It was human error combined, with an outdated method of dispatch in our area. Thank God our family had a second chance but unfortunately this gentleman that died Tuesday did not have the same opportunity. My prayers go out to this family in their time of loss...