By Scott Monroe, Kennebec Journal
Original publication date: Aug. 20, 2011

WATERVILLE, Maine — Another address mix-up that occurred during a 911 call this week highlights the importance of taking new measures to minimize such mistakes, the city’s police chief says.

Waterville Chief Joseph Massey, in describing the call, noted that the incident comes on the heels of the June 6 murder and suicide in Winslow, which also involved an address mix-up.

It was about 8 a.m. Tuesday when the Central Maine Regional Communications Center in Augusta received a 911 call from a 53-year-old woman who reported chest pains and trouble breathing.

The medical emergency call was then transferred to a dispatcher in Waterville, who was told by the Augusta dispatcher that the caller was located on Pare Street.

When the Waterville dispatcher was connected, however, the caller calmly replied that, no, she’s not on Pare Street, but Paris Street. She spelled “Paris” out to the dispatcher.

Emergency responders were not delayed by the brief mix-up and took the woman from Paris Street to Inland Hospital.

Pare and Paris streets are less than a third of a mile from each other.

For Massey, the incident is yet another reminder of how mix-ups are more apt to happen as a result of the state’s 911 call center consolidation. Under the consolidation, all 911 calls made on cell phones in the Waterville area must first go to the Augusta dispatch center, which then transfers the call to dispatchers in Waterville.

“Putting that additional step in the emergency process presents opportunities to make mistakes,” Massey said.

The issues of mix-ups was most prominently highlighted by the murder and suicide June 6 in Winslow, where local police were initially dispatched to the wrong address — apparently because the dispatcher in Augusta who first took the call misheard the street name.

Massey has warned that the consolidation has degraded emergency services, leading to a loss of available technology, institutional memory and local knowledge of the area to aid police responses.

Since the Winslow case, the Waterville dispatch center has adopted a new protocol for calls: street names must be spelled back by the caller.

Massey concedes that mistakes will happen and that they are rare, but he said public safety officials should try to minimize them as much as possible.

Massey said he contacted Augusta public safety officials this week about the mix-up.

Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, confirmed that Massey had spoken with Public Safety Commissioner John Morris about the incident, “and the commissioner is looking into it.”

About the Author

Contact Scott Monroe at 861-9239 or smonroe@centralmaine.com 

Copyright © 2011 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy