By Andy Paras
The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
Copyright 2006 The Post and Courier
WALTERBORO, S.C. — It was a stormy September morning and the car wreck dispatch calls were piling up.
Edwin Nettles of Walterboro wrecked first, shortly after 9 a.m. Sept. 28.
Nettles, 51, was pinned upside-down in his employer’s wrecker after the truck overturned in a ravine near the southbound lanes of Interstate 95.
A Colleton County Sheriff’s dispatcher figured out the tow truck’s location from a passing motorist and at 9:06 a.m. sent an ambulance and firetruck racing to mile marker 48 on the southbound side of the interstate.
But at 9:12 a.m., just as the emergency vehicles were about to reach Nettles, the dispatcher canceled the call.
As the firetruck headed to the second call of the morning — a head-on collision on Robertson Boulevard — it passed Nettles’ tow truck hidden in the ravine.
Dispatchers didn’t realize the mistake until 9:19 a.m. and emergency vehicles finally arrived at the ravine at 9:26 a.m., 20 minutes after they were first dispatched, according to the dispatch log.
Nettles was pronounced dead of asphyxia at 10 a.m., leaving fire and rescue officials to wonder whether they could have saved him had they arrived on time, though the county coroner said that’s highly doubtful.
A review of the 911 tapes from that morning, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that the dispatcher confused Nettles’ wreck with a third, minor, car wreck that occurred near mile marker 48 in the northbound lanes of I-95 a few minutes after Nettles crashed.
The driver of a Cadillac CTS told the dispatcher he was in the northbound lane, but she failed to recognize that it wasn’t the same wreck.
Kevin Willett, an instructor with California-based Public Safety Training Consultants, said it’s not unusual for dispatchers hearing repetitive calls to assume they’re all related.
He called it repetitive call syndrome.
Willett, who listened to the 911 tapes from Sept. 28 for The Post and Courier, said it was obvious someone made a mistake.
“It was pretty darn clear that the guy going northbound was driving a Cadillac and the guy going southbound was a tow truck driver,” he said. “The callers seemed pretty clear.”
In a series of internal e-mails also obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Colleton County Fire and Rescue officials said the incident was another example of how dispatchers’ mistakes have slowed their response times.
Three months earlier, ambulances arrived at the house of a choking woman 36 minutes late because a dispatcher misunderstood the caller’s address.
The woman died at the scene and her husband has filed a lawsuit against the county.
In a Sept. 28 e-mail to the sheriff’s office, Assistant Fire and Rescue Chief David Greene questioned why the ambulance and firetruck had been called off while on the way to mile marker 48.
“Our units did not stop at an accident with a critical patient trapped in the vehicle, based on the information they were given by dispatch,” Greene wrote. “The misinformation seriously delayed the extrication and patient care.”
But Colleton County Coroner Richard Harvey said recently that the condition of the truck was so bad that the minutes lost likely would not have made a difference.
“My personal opinion is I don’t think they would have saved him,” Harvey said.
Harvey said the ambulance and the firetruck would not have had the equipment on hand to pull Nettles from the vehicle fast enough.
“Mr. Nettles could not be extricated until the vehicle was righted,” he wrote in the coroner’s report.
Fire and Rescue Director Barry McRoy declined to comment for this story, as did the Nettles family.
The dispatcher that day received an undisclosed reprimand for her mistake, Lt. Angie Smith said.
Smith, who oversees the dispatch center, said the dispatcher didn’t hear the driver of the Cadillac say northbound and assumed there was only one wreck at mile marker 48.
“She should have caught that he said northbound and questioned him further,” Smith said.
But Smith said the three wrecks had occurred in a matter of minutes, including two at the same mile marker.
“She was getting multiple calls on southbound,” he said. “She did not catch on that it was northbound.”
To prevent mistakes from happening, Willett said instructors with his company train dispatchers to confirm information completely and, if any doubt exists, to notify a supervisor or watch commander.
“You need to listen to every caller and you need to respond appropriately to every caller,” Willett said.
Willett and other dispatch consultants said agencies and dispatchers can do several things to prevent mistakes from happening.
Gary Allen, editor and publisher of Dispatch Monthly Magazine in Berkeley, Calif., said “coincidental double incidents” are a fact of life and dispatchers should remain open to the possibility that two similar calls at the same time might be different.
“Two people could have a heart attack right next door to each other,” Allen said. “You cannot assume that he (the caller) is calling about next door.”