EMS workers administered oxygen to the unidentified male, who was unconscious for several minutes according to witnesses who say the man turned blue and at one point appeared to have stopped breathing. Robert Stridiron/The Forum Newsgroup
Despite frantic calls from police and several bystanders at the scene, it took a city ambulance more than half an hour to respond to a case in which an elderly man suffered a seizure, collapsed on a Richmond Hill street and turned blue.
According to 911 logs, it was Monday afternoon at 1540 hours, 3:40 p.m., when the first call went into the system, and 1615 hours–35 minutes later, when an ambulance arrived at the scene.
The 102 Precinct School Sergeant was one of those who called, describing the severity of the situation to a dispatcher and asking for a rush on an ambulance–– but his call into the city’s recently overhauled $88 million 911 call taking system did not produce desired results.
“I seen the guy fall on the floor,” said eyewitness Jonathan Hernandez, who lives nearby. He was one of several witnesses who used their cell phones to call 911 and report the collapse of the elderly man between 113th and 114th streets on Jamaica Avenue. “He was turning blue and not breathing,” the Good Samaritan said.
Hernandez say police at the scene stayed with the man, trying their best to do what they could, but it seemed like forever for an ambulance to finally reach the scene.
And he explained, this was not the first time he was involved in a similar set of circumstances. “This has been happening so much around here,” said Hernandez. “The same thing happened to my neighbor, the guy died in my apartment building because the ambulance took over 30 minutes to get to him.”
In addition to the calls delivered directly to the CAD, tow truck drivers, news desks and other police scanner devotees heard repeated and borderline frantic requests from police at the scene to get an ambulance to the scene, as the man’s condition grew graver by the minute.
It was as recently as late August when The Forum reported on computer glitches in NYC’s 911 call taking system. Produced by an Atlanta based company, Intergraph, the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) had been experiencing difficulties and was responsible for the city’s system dropping calls and causing delays in fire, police and EMS response and giving rise to serious, and in some cases deadly consequences.
But a spokesperson from the company told The Forum back in August since going live on the new ICAD system on May 29th, it has “successfully processed over 1,000,000 emergency responses by the NYPD and FDNY and has
proven highly reliable,” the spokesman said.
By Patricia Adams
