Deaf Dial In to Problems With 911 : Untrained Operators, Faulty Equipment Plague TDD Use

The death of a deaf woman from respiratory failure in San Diego after she failed to get through to the emergency 911 telephone system has triggered reports from across California that 911 emergency operators are hanging up on calls from the deaf.

Cases have been reported in at least a half dozen counties, coming to light only after the San Diego case last summer in which a 911 operator mistook the sound of the woman’s telecommunications machine for a child playing with a touch-tone phone.

The problem stems in part from the fact that emergency operators receive so few calls from the deaf that many do not recognize the high-pitched beeping sound of the telecommunications devices (TDDs) that deaf people nationwide use increasingly to communicate by phone.

Police and fire departments have also failed to maintain the TDDs on the receiving end, say advocates for the deaf and state 911 officials. Emergency operators as well as some deaf people appear to be confused about how to place and receive calls for help.

“I think what we’re looking at is a categorical failure to serve the deaf community,” said Greg Relyea, a San Diego lawyer representing the family of the woman who died. “The equipment is not adequate, the training procedures are not implemented and records of problems are not maintained.”

An estimated 220,000 Californians have such impaired hearing they are unable to communicate by telephone. Many of those use TDDs--small devices like word processors consisting largely of a keyboard on which to type messages for transmission over telephone wires to other TDDs.

For that reason, police and fire departments are expected to train their operators to recognize the high-pitched beeping sound of a TDD. Upon hearing it, they are to transfer the call to a TDD in the office. A trained operator can type messages back to the caller. (Since many deaf people are unable to talk, calling 911 without a TDD would be useless.)

Under state law, TDDs are distributed free to the deaf and hearing-impaired by telephone companies under a program subsidized by a surcharge on all phone bills. State officials are uncertain how many TDDs are in use, but Pacific Bell alone has distributed more than 15,000.

Last March, Pacific Bell informed TDD users that the 911 system was accessible to them.

“Statewide emergency service now available to all TDD users by dialing 9-1-1!” said a brochure Pacific Bell distributed. To use it, the company said, just turn the TDD on, hook it to the phone, dial 911 and press the space bar on the TDD keyboard until someone answers.

“It is simple and easy to use,” Pacific Bell said. “911 has saved thousands of lives and stopped crime. Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Jay Shufeldt, a retired newspaper printer living in San Diego, says he was aware of those instructions and followed them last July 17. He had returned home from his volunteer job to find his 72-year-old wife, Mary, lying in bed and having trouble breathing.

Shufeldt, who is deaf, called 911 by TDD three times over three hours. Each time, he received no response on the printout from his TDD. Finally, Shufeldt reached a daughter, who can hear and speak. She called 911 from her home and paramedics responded. By the time they arrived, Mrs. Shufeldt had died.

An internal investigation by the San Diego Police Department concluded that a 911 operator did receive two calls from Shufeldt that night. But Capt. George Malloy said the operator failed to recognize the TDD signal and hung up, thinking “that children were playing with the phone.”

Attorney Relyea has filed a $284,000 wrongful-death claim against the city, county and state, contending he has medical evidence suggesting Mrs. Shufeldt would not have died had she gotten prompt medical care.

The agencies, however, recently rejected the claim--a prerequisite for filing suit against the agencies. Relyea said last week that he intends to file suit this month.

Meanwhile, news of the incident has spread through the deaf community nationwide, largely in newsletters published by agencies serving the deaf. In California, it has brought to light reports of comparable cases, though none that allegedly resulted in a death.

Among the reported cases:

- In Riverside County, the Inland Service Center for the Deaf and Hearing-Impaired asked the Riverside Police Department to investigate a complaint from a woman who said she was unable to reach 911 when her husband had a severe asthma attack on July 26. The woman ended up contacting a deaf friend with a son who can hear. He called 911. The man was hospitalized for three days for respiratory arrest, said Doug England, supervisor of interpreting services.

- In Alameda County, a group of young deaf men and women reported that they were unable to reach 911 when they believed a roommate was suicidal, said Wanda Dryden, an interpreter at the NORCAL Center on Deafness. After breaking down the bedroom door and taking the roommate to the hospital, they returned to find a police officer at their apartment investigating what the department had concluded were crank calls to the 911 system, Dryden said.

- Tony Papalia, a job counselor with NORCAL, said a member of his deaf bowling league in Sacramento told him he had been unable to get through to 911 after seeing a car hit a small boy. Papalia said another friend had been unable to get through after suffering a stroke at a party. In the end, neighbors successfully called 911.

- Attorney Relyea recently received a letter from a counselor at a social service agency in Sonoma County who said a deaf client had tried without success to call 911 on July 6, believing someone was breaking into his house. The police later told the instructor that they believed an inexperienced operator had not understood the TDD, the letter to Relyea said.

- In Pasadena, Lt. Wesley Rice said the police department discovered that its sole TDD worked only intermittently. He said the department made the discovery when Pauline Annarino from Life Signs came in to discuss police communications with the deaf and asked her office to call the station by TDD. The TDD has since been replaced, Rice said.

- In Orange County, Fullerton Fire Chief Ron Coleman said he called seven emergency dispatch centers in Orange County and “found many . . . have their TDD hooked up to old seven-digit numbers” for the deaf rather than to the 911 system. He said last week that he had alerted all fire departments in the county and would ask the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs in Washington to send out a national alert.

- At a meeting in Arleta in the San Fernando Valley last month to discuss fears about the 911 system with police and state 911 officials, several members of the audience of about 80 deaf people told additional stories of being unable to get through in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In an interview last week, William Brandenburg, the 911 program manager, said he has become convinced that there is a problem, and that it stems from inadequate training of police emergency operators and poor maintenance of police department TDDs.

Brandenburg said most of the problems seem to have resulted from emergency telephone operator inexperience--even though his office distributes a two-minute training tape that police and fire departments should use to familiarize operators with the sound of a TDD.

But he said he suspected that “some of the hearing-impaired don’t play the game either.” When calling for emergency help, they may not be hitting the TDD space bar and thus activating the high-pitched tone that informs the operator it is a TDD call.

Advocates for the deaf agree that that may explain some instances in which deaf people say they were unable to get through. Because most deaf people communicate largely with other deaf people, they do not usually need to activate the high-pitched tone.

Brandenberg also said it also seems that the TDDs in some dispatch centers get so little use, they fall into disrepair. Finally, he said most emergency operators are probably unfamiliar with the abbreviated English many deaf people use when communicating by TDD.

Several modifications to the current system have been suggested.

General Telephone of California intends to begin this month testing a new TDD with an electronic “voice enunciator.” A recorded voice replaces the high-pitched beeping sound and states that a hearing-impaired person is calling and should be connected to a TDD.

The device was developed recently for the state of Florida, where the state agency for the deaf asked bidding telecommunications contractors to develop a voice enunciator system. If it works, General Telephone intends to make it available to its TDD customers in California.

Meanwhile, Brandenburg says most police and fire departments would be better off not using their own TDDs for 911 calls. He is encouraging them to refer TDD 911 calls to the so-called state relay system initiated last month.

Under that system, deaf people using TDDs can communicate with hearing people using telephones by calling a central interpretation bureau in Hayward. There, a professional interpreter with a TDD and a phone a serves as an intermediary in a conference call.

Some law enforcement agencies already use the service. When an emergency operator receives a TDD call and recognizes the high-pitched tone, he or she transfers the call to the interpretation bureau, stays on the line, then dispatches help depending on the emergency.

But Fire Chief Coleman in Fullerton disagreed with Brandenburg, saying he felt community departments should be allowed to deal directly with their constituencies. He questioned how many calls the state translation bureau could handle in the event of an emergency.

“My perception of the problem is that it is a classic example of a communications gap,” said Coleman. “The people in the deaf community are obviously picking up more and more access . . . and yet the fire services and law enforcement services receive so few calls utilizing this system that the dispatch centers really haven’t caught up to speed.”

He added, “I think it’s indicative of a broader problem concerning any specific disability. . . . What it boils down to is these people are such a small population, they tend to get lost in the shuffle.”