Land lines can be lifelines
The 12-year-old girl had a choice when she saw her mother lying on the couch, shaking and unresponsive.
She could have grabbed a cellphone next to the woman and dialed 911, or she could have called from a land-line phone in another room. She went for the cellphone.
It turned out to be a dangerous decision.
As in the case of hundreds of thousands of other wireless 911 calls across California in recent months, the cellphone failed to transmit a location signal to the California Highway Patrol, which fields such calls and transfers them to local emergency dispatchers.
“My mom’s, like, shaking. . . . She can’t stand,” the girl told the local dispatcher, according to the 911 tape.
The dispatcher asked for the address.
“I’m at 2315,” answered the girl, whose family requested that her name be withheld.
The CHP operator, who had remained on the line, cut in: “This is CHP. She said 1523 [earlier].”
The local dispatcher asked the girl to repeat the address. She again said 2315.
Her mother, she said, had taken some medication.
“Did she possibly overdose?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said, passing the phone to her 30-year-old brother. Three times, he too told the dispatcher the address was 1523.
He was wrong -- it was 2315.
Such mistakes, officials say, are common during emergencies. “People freeze up,” said Dan Burch, director of the San Joaquin Emergency Medical Services Agency, which oversees paramedics in Stockton.
A little more than six minutes into the call, the brother told the dispatcher he heard sirens wailing. But the rescuers drove past the home.
Twenty-four minutes after the call was placed, paramedics finally arrived at the right address.
The mother, Tina Seabron, 46, was eventually taken to a local hospital, where she was treated and released.
Burch said the case is a good example of why callers should never use a cellphone to dial 911 if they have a choice.
“You don’t have that fail-safe” location information, he said.
--
rich.connell@latimes.com
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