Previous Report Highlighted 911 Center Deficiencies

By Odette Yousef

Atlanta, GA – Yesterday, Fulton County Manager Zachary Williams announced that an outside auditor will come in to investigate the county's 9-1-1 call center, and find out what led to a woman's death over the weekend.

39-year-old Darlene Dukes died in her Johns Creek apartment while waiting for an ambulance, because a 9-1-1 operator botched the call.

But a year ago, a report from one of the county's ambulance providers called for such an audit and was ignored.

WABE's Odette Yousef reports.

Williams does not expect that an audit will reflect poorly on the county:

WILLIAMS: Their charge will be to look at our operation, look at national standards, and convince me that we are in fact compliant with national standards. That's what I'm being told, and I have no reason to believe that's not the case, but you know. This gives us an opportunity and a cause to take a look at the whole system.

But according to the report that the Rural Metro Ambulance Company gave to Fulton County Commissioners last year, there ARE serious problems with how the county communications center operates.

In a 6-month period, from January through July of 2007, the company documented 12 examples in which Fulton County dispatchers mishandled 9-1-1 calls.

In one case, it took an operator 50 minutes to dispatch an ambulance to a call.

In several, operators accidentally logged ambulances off the computer-aided dispatch system, making them unavailable to receive dispatch calls.

In another instance, ambulance crews were unable to reach the fulton county dispatcher over the radio for extended periods of time in one night.

The director of the county's communications center did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Williams took office several months after the report was issued.

When asked whether those cases and the most recent incident indicate systemic problems at the 9-1-1 center, he insisted that Dukes' death was one person's mistake:

WILLIAMS: The incident that occurred this past weekend is not representative of a failed problem systemwide but instead it's an isolated and tragic accident caused by human error

Emergency responders in the county say it's tragic that Darlene Dukes had to die before the county pursued an audit that had been recommended a year before.

Meanwhile, Rural Metro continues to negotiate a contract with the county to continue providing ambulance services for cities in South Fulton.

Odette Yousef, WABE News.