Why We Need Cellular ALI
by Chip Seymour
| Chip Seymour is a volunteer firefighter with the Lancaster Fire Department and a part-time dispatcher for the town of Bolton, MA. |
This sidebar can be found on
page 62 of the May/June 1998
issue of 9-1-1 Magazine.
During October, 1996, a driver lost control of his Corvette and collided with a tree in Lancaster, Massachusetts. The impact pinned the driver and a passenger and ignited the car. Friends of the driver, including his wife, were following in separate vehicles and witnessed the crash. One of them dialed 9-1-1 on a cellular telephone to request emergency equipment. Reaching the State Police barracks 50 miles away, he shouted into the phone, "my buddy's on fire!"
In Massachusetts, cellular 9-1-1 calls are routed to one of two State Police barracks, either in Framingham or Northampton. This 9-1-1 call was answered in Framingham.
The caller was quite excited, and it took several seconds for the SP dispatcher to determine in which town the incident was located and transfer the caller to the Lancaster dispatcher. (Massachusetts has a statewide E9-1-1 system using PEI equipment. Although the SP barracks E9-1-1 installation is complete, Lancaster did not have its equipment installed at that time). The caller, who was a Lancaster resident, could not comprehend why the SP dispatcher did not know the location - evidently he thought he was talking directly to a Lancaster dispatcher.
Lancaster Police dispatcher Regina Baer has had 14 years dispatch experience, 12 of them in Lancaster. According to Gina, the SP dispatcher announced, "I have a 9-1-1 call; he's having a hard time." Collectively, they both attempted to obtain information from the caller who was yelling into his phone, "Get some help, get them going. He's on fire!" mixed with other expletives. Since he was yelling loudly, they were unable to understand him clearly, but thought he made reference to a "meadow."
Not knowing the nature of the call (due to the yelling it sounded to the dispatchers as though it may have been a domestic assault), the dispatcher sent patrol officers to a "person on fire, possibly on Meadow Road." Unfortunately, this location was at the opposite end of town, a 5-7 minute high-speed response from the actual incident scene.
Gina repeatedly asked for a better location. At length, the caller stated "Lunenburg Road." Gina re-routed the patrol officers and also dispatched local fire and EMS to "Lunenburg Road, better location to follow."
Lunenburg Road is about 3 miles along, but each request for an exact location was met with confusion and yelling. (This area of Lunenburg Road is heavily wooded with homes set back with homes set back from the road. It's possible there are no house numbers at the road's edge.)
Several minutes into the call, a local resident who lived on Lunenburg called Lancaster dispatch on his landline and said that "something's happening in front of my house." The correct location was immediately relayed to the responding units.
Accident witnesses and passersby were able to extract the two victims from the burning vehicle. EMTs arriving on scene found both victims with burns and fractures. Both were airlifted to a local hospital, where they were treated and eventually released.
The incident is another dramatic example of the vital need for cellular location technology - and the hazards that exist without it.
