Photo by Eric Purcell
As many as seven D.C. fire department employees face “personnel action” for their roles in three ambulances being incorrectly listed as out-of-service earlier this month when a Metropolitan Police Department officer was struck by a car.
The March 5 incident, in which the officer was eventually treated and transported by an ambulance from neighboring Prince George’s County, is the subject of an new investigation by Paul Quander, D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety. Quander’s report, which was leaked yesterday and officially released today, states that the improper ambulance shortage the result of human error.
The first vehicle, Ambulance 15, was removed from the active list after two firefighters manning it logged out of the computer system that monitors the status of emergency response vehicles. The ambulance was at its station at 2101 14th Street SE, about four miles from the scene of the wounded cop. One if the firefighters told Quander’s office that they closed the laptop in the ambulance that communicates with the tracking system, but promptly re-opened it. But the report goes on to state that the system is not automatically disengaged by the shutting of a laptop cover.
A second vehicle, Medic 19, staffed by one paramedic and one emergency medical technician, was still logged as being at Howard University Hospital, where it had recently transported a patient. The vehicle, however, was already back at its station about three miles from the injured officer.
The third vehicle in question, Medic 27, also staffed by one paramedic and one EMT, was taken out of service after reporting low batteries in a cardiac monitoring device that were not replaced during a shift change. Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services rules put the burden of devices being in working order on the staffs of each vehicle. Medic 27 was 1.5 miles from the scene at which the officer was struck.
The seventh department staffer being held accountable is a captain who was on duty as the emergency liaison officer, or ELO, at the city’s Office of Unified Communications. According to Quander’s report, the captain, who was responsible for monitoring unit availability, was either unaware or did nothing to prevent the three ambulances from being taken out of service.
“There was a lack of awareness by the captain,” Quander says in an interview. “He seemed to not know what was going on despite the fact that he is in the same work area as the dispatchers. He has access to the same information everyone else has.”
Quander is turning his report over to the fire department, where Chief Kenneth Ellerbe and other department leaders will handle disciplinary measures. So far, none of the seven staffers mentioned in the investigation have been removed from duty.
The report also recommends the implementation of a dashboard-like system for tracking which emergency medical units are available and which are on calls. That system is currently being rolled out at the Office of Unified Communications, he says.
Dabney Hudson, the second vice president of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 36, which represents 1,800 D.C. firefighters and paramedics, says the dashboard system is a good remedy, but says the rest of Quander’s report “isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
Hudson agrees that the fact that no D.C. ambulance was able to respond to the injured police officer was the result of human error, but he is more concerned with the fire department’s much-criticized record on its reserve units. Union leaders have been sharply critical of the department’s lists of its reserve vehicles, some of which are in no shape to be called into active service, such as a ladder truck that is actually junked in a Wisconsin scrapyard.
Thirty ambulances and other emergency vehicles were in service the evening of March 5, with another six properly taken out of service, Quander’s investigation states. In the interview today, Quander says the fire department is supposed to have four vehicles ready to go into service should one go offline. The union says that is not the reality.
“We had no units. We have no reserves,” Hudson says. “This plan’s been in place and it’s already failed.”
Quander, however, says the number of vehicles that are being reported as out-of-service is decreasing.
Pedro Ribeiro, a spokesman for Mayor Vince Gray, says that one of the city’s own ambulances would have been able to respond to the wounded police officer had the fire department implemented a deployment plan Ellerbe proposed last year. Under that plan, more ambulances and emergency responders would be deployed during the daytime and early evening, but no paramedics would be on call between the 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.
“If we were on the proposed system, we would have had six more ambulances on call,” Ribeiro says.
But Hudson, the union vice president, says Quander’s report offers very little to remedy the situation. And he warns that instances in which D.C. residents—cops and otherwise—are made to face excessively long waits for an emergency response will only increase as it gets closer to summer, when demand for ambulances is at its greatest. The D.C. Office of the Inspector General is also conduction an investigation into the March 5 incident.
“They need to increase our ability to provide service to the city,” he says. “Until we can get a substantive report, it’s going to continue and get even worse. This is a story that’s going to repeat itself all summer long.”
D.C. Deputy Mayor Paul Quander’s report on ambulances taken out of service.
