Reproduced from The Post and Courier, Charleston, SC (used with permission)

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County lines, cell phones can delay 911 responses

By: BO PETERSEN    Of The Post and Courier Staff
Originally Published on: 8/20/01
Page: A 1

    
    
    
     LINCOLNVILLE-Charles Bailey lay on the floor turning blue. He had stopped breathing. Help depended on a cell phone.
     But a cell phone call from here can go to a tower in any of three counties and be relayed to any of four emergency dispatch operations.
     When Charlene Bailey, Charles' wife, dialed 911, two Lincolnville emergency first responders happened to be on the road, each only a few miles from Bailey's home.
     "We didn't receive the call. We were never dispatched to it," said Fire Chief Charles Gantt, one of those responders.
     The problem is endemic. More than 100 wireless communications companies - and more than 6,800 emergency dispatches - operate in the United States.
     A 911 call from a wire-line phone automatically transmits the address and other information. A cellular phone can be used from anywhere. Getting the caller to the right dispatcher requires a hunt.
     It's a problem across Charleston County and the Lowcountry, particularly near county lines, said Don Lundy, Charleston County emergency services director.
     "If you're in County A and you hit a tower in County B, you could delay a response," he said.
     In Lincolnville the problem is acute. Gantt says it has the potential for disaster.
     The rural 900-person town sits in a wedge off the far end of Charleston County, up against Dorchester and Berkeley counties. Summerville also abuts it. Each has its own dispatch operation.
     No wireless communications tower is located in Lincolnville. Any call goes somewhere else.
     "There's no fix. The only fix is communication between departments," Gantt said.
     THE EMERGENCY Charles Bailey, 75, was a Navy veteran, a survivor of the World War II sinking of the USS Yorktown at Midway, when he spent 32 hours in the water.
     He and Charlene moved here three years ago after attending a Yorktown crew reunion at Patriot's Point. They wanted a slower pace of life. Both had been widowed. They married five years ago.
     If an elderly couple's home across the street needed pressure washing, Bailey did it. He joined the town's public safety committee. The kids in the neighborhood called him Grandpa.
     "He was just a gentle man. I never saw him lose his temper," Charlene Bailey said.
     On the morning of July 10, he came into the house, sat down and had a glass of iced tea. He said he was having trouble breathing but would be OK. Then he said he wouldn't be OK, staggered to the living room and collapsed.
     Charlene Bailey picked up a cell phone and dialed. The call went to Berkeley County dispatch, which doesn't dispatch Lincolnville crews.
     The Berkeley County dispatcher relayed the information to Charleston County Emergency Medical Services as primary responders.
     The dispatcher also put out a call to C&B Volunteer Fire Department as a first responder. C&B, across the Berkeley County line less than three miles from Lincolnville, serves the Ladson and Sangaree areas in southern Berkeley and northern Charleston counties.
     According to Berkeley County records, a C&B first responder was on the way in four minutes.
     First responders are trained to give emergency first aid, but not to perform medical procedures. They volunteer to help where they can until EMS workers arrive. They don't always work from a station.
     The nearest Charleston County EMS crew was on Cross County Road, off Ashley Phosphate Road some 10 miles away, with no direct route to Lincolnville.
     Lincolnville Volunteer Fire Department, which has 14 of its 16 firefighters trained as first responders, recently has averaged a 3-minute response. But it drags around an old reputation as a part-time operation that didn't always show up.
     Knowing the confusion that can surround a Lincolnville 911 call and knowing the reputation, many of its firefighters routinely keep an ear on dispatch calls in surrounding counties.
     "Part of that old reputation that Lincolnville never showed up, well sometimes they never got called," Gantt said.
     The Lincolnville firefighter arrived four minutes after the call, and Fire Chief Gantt shortly afterward. C&B never did. EMS arrived in 14 minutes, good time from Cross County Road, but in the case of a heart attack, a lifetime.
     "The chief started CPR and kept saying, where is EMS?" Charlene Bailey said. "I kept yelling at that lady (dispatcher) where I lived, the Lincolnville-Summerville area."
     Bailey's heartbeat was restored in the EMS ambulance but he never woke up. He died July 14.
     THE CALL Elizabeth Wrenn, Berkeley County telecommunications director, Gantt and Lundy agree the cell phone call did not delay the response. Gantt says C&B first responders couldn't have done any more than Lincolnville did.
     Gantt says simply that he was glad he was listening.
     Wrenn says C&B was told to cancel the call by Charleston County after Lincolnville arrived on the scene. Lincolnville is dispatched by Charleston County.
     Lundy says Charleston County EMS did not cancel the call. C&B Fire Chief Billy Bryant referred questions to the department's attorney, Trent Kernodle. On a tape of the call provided by Kernodle the exchange is:
     "This is Louise at C&B Fire Department. We just got toned out (called) for first responder (at the Lincolnville address). I believe that's Lincolnville. Have you notified Lincolnville?"
     Charleston County EMS: "We have Lincolnville on scene."
     "They are on scene? Then we don't need to go?"
     "No, if Berkeley County toned you out, y'all don't need to go. We've got Lincolnville there."
     Lundy said first responder response is a give-and-take kind of thing, but that boundaries should not matter when it comes to a life.
     Kernodle said if 911 had worked the right way, C&B never would have gotten the call.
     Without a doubt, cell phones are the most helpful 911 tool in the past 20 years, providing almost instant contact, Lundy said. But there's only so much technology can do.
     "People feel when they dial 911 we have all the information. We don't (with cell phone calls)," Wrenn said. "They need to stay on the line."
     More than 8,700 calls to Berkeley County dispatch in the second quarter of 2001 came from cell phones, approximately half its load.
     "Down the line it's going to become a major problem," Wrenn said.
     THE TECHNOLOGY The Federal Communications Commission has ordered cellular phone companies to have a way to locate 911 calls starting in October. But most companies have been given extensions, said Travis Larson, Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association spokesman.
     The solution likely will be a Global Positioning Satellite hook-up installed in the phone.
     But Larson said there are problems - store shelf GPS units currently are bigger than the phones, the technology has to make sure cell phone and GPS signals don't cross, and there are some 110 million cell phones already in use without it.
     That, and the cost of a GPS-linked phone, would be a lot, he said.
     Larson said the first GPS phones could be on the shelves as early as next year.
     An FCC spokeswoman said one company has been given a waiver on the October date and that others are pending. The order provides a phase-in period through 2005, and the FCC expects the technology to be widely available in the next few years, she said.
     Charleston County EMS expects to have ambulances equipped with GPS by November, Lundy said. But he expects getting equipped cell phones on store shelves locally will take five years.
     Lundy is working to open an EMS station farther up in Lincolnville's rapidly developing end of the county.
     The 911 problem here is also complicated by a legacy of homes whose addresses in the past weren't listed as Lincolnville, a checkerboard pattern of homes in or out of town along its boundary streets, and some 28 properties cut by town limits.
     Gantt has worked aggressively with dispatch operations to bring their address lists up to date.
     It's no easy feat. A 911 call made from one mobile home park in town can go to four different dispatchers, depending on whether the person calls from home, across the street, the corner or a store around the corner.
     Gantt is going door-to-door through the town to update addresses, and with Charleston County EMS will contact other counties about updating mutual aid dispatches to call out Lincolnville more often.
     "The hardest thing in the world," Gantt said, is to hear an emergency call go out for a location just outside town, and have to wait for someone to ask the department's assistance.
     "It's all working together. There's no other answer for it," he said.
     Charlene Bailey blinks back tears. "I sit here on the line of three counties. So does everyone else in this area," she said. "There should be no such thing as county lines when it comes to emergency response."
     Bo Petersencovers Summerville, Lincolnville and Dorchester County. Contact him at 843-745-5852.
    

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