May 20, 2009 10:07 pm US/Mountain
911 Foul-Up In Aurora: A Devastating Delay
Written by Brian Maass
DENVER (CBS4) ―
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Robert Lowman's mother, Sandra, died while paramedics were sent the wrong way.
CBS
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Marshell and Robert Lowman talk to CBS4 investigator Brian Maass.
CBS
A 64-year-old grandmother is dead and her family blames slow response by fire department responders in Aurora who were sent miles in the wrong direction by their 911 dispatch center.
A CBS4 investigation revealed how a maximum 4 or 5 minute drive to cover 1.5 miles for Aurora fire engines and paramedics, instead turned into a disastrous mess, taking more than twice that long with ambulances and a fire engine taking 13 to 15 minutes to get to their destination.
"It's not acceptable. There's no excuse for this, none," said Robert Lowman, whose mother, Sandra, slowly died of congestive heart failure in his Aurora driveway waiting for medical assistance.
Aurora's public information officer, Kim Stuart, admitted the city botched this call.
"In this case this call didn't go as it should have and was not up to our standards," said Stuart. "And there were errors made in selecting an inappropriate address."
It all began April 2 when Sandra Lowman flew from her home in Detroit to Denver to see her son and his family. She planned to celebrate her 65th birthday in Colorado and enjoy her grandchildren during their spring break. But Lowman would never even make it inside her son's house.
She became ill on the flight to Denver and was taken straight from Denver International Airport to an area hospital. After an overnight stay doctors released her on April 3. Her son, a Gulf War veteran, his wife and their children, picked her up from the hospital that Friday afternoon. But as they arrived at their home on South Oak Hill Circle in Aurora, Sandra Lowman became short of breath. Her son Robert and his wife, Marshell, called Aurora's 911 dispatch center simultaneously -- one from a cell phone, the other from a landline inside the house.
Under Colorado Open Records Law, CBS4 obtained tapes of the Lowman's calls to 911 along with recorded conversations between dispatchers, fire engines, ambulances and police.
The tapes show that Robert and Marshell Lowman gave dispatchers their correct address in Aurora. But a dispatcher was somehow confused whether the home was in Aurora or Arapahoe County. Aurora says it had incorrect address data in its dispatch system that gave dispatchers a choice of sending help to Aurora or Arapahoe County.
For reasons that are unclear, the dispatcher mistakenly sent the first responders to Arapahoe County, miles from the Lowman's home on South Oak Hill Circle. The fire engine that was sent carried three paramedics who could have provided immediate medical care.
"Clearly, this isn't up to our standards and an error was made in selecting the address," said Aurora Administrator Kim Stuart. "That did slow our response time."
Tapes, logs and other documentation show dispatchers sent their crews to a non- existent address in Arapahoe County, about two miles in the opposite direction of the Lowman's home.
At one point a firefighter tells the dispatch center, "We're trying to get close. We don't know exactly where we're going."
Aurora's fire trucks are equipped with the equivalent of a GPS mapping system which shows on a screen where they are, where they are going, and the fastest route to get there. But in this case the data in the system was erroneous sending them on what amounted to a wild goose chase.
"We are unable to locate this address according to the ... maps," said a frustrated firefighter over the radio system.
The delay in getting to the Lowman's home was so pronounced and so excruciating, Robert Lowman got into his car, drove to Fire Station 13 looking for help. Finding the station empty and the trucks gone, he then drove home only to find the ambulance and fire truck still hadn't arrived.
The documents uncovered by CBS4 also revealed that when police were sent to backup fire personnel, they too were sent to the wrong address in Arapahoe County.
"Mapping is putting us in the wrong place," said one voice on the radio system, apparently an Aurora Police Officer. "Don't follow your mapping, its putting us way too far south. Your mapping is showing a bad address," continued the officer.
The officer continues saying, "ran into an ambulance, they're not sure where to go either."
By now, the Lowman's are heard on dispatch tapes getting frantic as Sandra Lowman is slipping away and help still hasn't arrived.
"My mother's dying, goodbye, goodbye," a frustrated Robert Lowman said to a dispatcher before hanging up.
Finally, 13 minutes after being dispatched, an ambulance arrived, 2 minutes later, the fire truck -- which started out only 1.5 miles away -- arrived at the Lowman home.
Aurora administrators admit that at most it should have taken the fire truck 5 minutes to respond. A CBS4 crew covered the distance between the fire station and the Lowman home in 2.5 minutes, traveling about 35 to 40 miles per hour.
Sandra Lowman was not responsive by the time help arrived and she was pronounced dead soon after. The Lowman family believes a timely response could have saved her life.
Stuart was asked if an appropriate response might have dictated a different outcome.
"It doesn't serve a purpose to speculate and I couldn't know," said Stuart.
She noted that Aurora's dispatch center receives about 640,000 incoming calls a year and dispatches police, fire and medical help about 370,000 times a year. Stuart said what the CBS4 investigation found was a rare, unfortunate case. She went on to say that steps are being taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.
According to Stuart, address information ingested into the city's dispatch system is now being double checked for accuracy and dispatchers are undergoing additional training. Stuart said that dispatchers and other emergency personnel feel badly about what happened.
"It's truly sad. Our hearts go out to the family," Stuart said.
Six weeks after the incident, Robert Lowman told CBS4 nobody from the city administration had bothered to call his family and offer an apology or an explanation.
"We had a huge loss. It was terrible, terrible," Marshell Lowman said.
The family has not planned any legal action. They said they just want the city to fix the problem so this doesn't happen again to another family.
(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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