D.C. is investigating the latest ambulance delay, in which the closest units did not respond to a 911 call.
Nina and Richard Rose described it as the scariest 23 minutes of their lives – the time between their 1-year-old son being knocked unconscious and help arriving.
“He was completely unresponsive at first, and for a minute I thought that he was dead or dying, which is why I lost my mind and started screaming,” Nina Rose said.
Dispatch records obtained by News4 show the first call to 911 was made at 10:10 a.m. Sunday after the boy fell down the porch steps and hit his head. Despite the 1 year old being unconscious, the dispatcher listed his condition as conscious and rated the emergency as minor.
“After just five minutes we were getting concerned,” Richard Rose said. “After 10 minutes I called back to say what’s the deal.”
There were at least three calls to 911. After more than 23 minutes, an ambulance arrived, but records show it wasn’t the closest available unit or even the second closest unit.
“I felt like at that point I could have gotten him to Sibley (Memorial Hospital), the ER, in that amount of time we had been waiting,” Nina Rose said.
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Dispatch records show a second ambulance and a fire truck were also dispatched but never arrived.
In the end, the boy regained consciousness and was diagnosed with a concussion.
The next day, Nina Rose sent emails to her council member and the mayor, then she got a call from new Fire Chief Gregory Dean and D.C. Homeland Security Emergency Management Agency Director Chris Geldart saying they were sorry.
“We were sorry that her experience with the D.C. fire department was not a positive experience and we were looking forward to showing her we were going to make positive steps,” Dean said.
“We both want the residents to expect what we expect if something happens to our children, that the services are going to be there when you call them, and we’re going to work hard to make sure they are,” Geldart said.
A senior official with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration said this is how they plan to handle mistakes, by immediately owning up to them, making direct contact with the residents involved and working to fix the problem.
“It actually made me feel so much better,” Nina Rose said. “I’m so glad that it seems like they’re taking a new approach. They seemed very responsive.”
