NEW ORLEANS — It took 25 minutes after an initial 911 call before New Orleans police arrived at the scene where three children died in a fire in the 4900 block of America Street, according to Karl Fasold, the chief of the Orleans Parish Communications District, which oversees the 911 program.
Fasold presented a timeline of the 911 calls and dispatches for police, fire and EMS late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning and at the time the initial call came in, there was no police unit free to respond to what he called a Domestic Violence Code 2, which he said normally triggers a "lights and sirens" response.
When that happens, Fasold said protocol dictates that the call is sent out by a tone and a broadcast to units on duty. He said that happened within five minutes but there were no units cleared that could respond to the call at that time.
"In an ideal world, we would have enough field units to be able to assign someone and send them to that call immediately. You guys are well aware that we don’t live in an ideal world now.”
Late Thursday afternoon, NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said that an investigation into the response time will be undertaken by the Public Integrity Bureau.
"We can see those timelines and there was enough information for us to say that we need to look into a thorough review," said Kirkpatrick.
A GoFundMe account has been set up for the family of the children killed in the fire.
In discussing the dispatching of the fire department, Fasold said they were dealing only with the information that had come in, the call with a mother who said that children were screaming and that the father had threatened to set the house on fire.
“Policy is not to send fire just because someone says someone is going to set a fire,” he said. “If we sent fire units to every time somebody said there’s going to be a fire, at that point, you’re rolling fire units, Code 2, endangering citizens, etc… etc…”
He said that about eight minutes after midnight was the first call reporting a fire. He said that a dispatch an incident was sent to the fire department within two minutes and the first fire unit arrived less than five minutes later, at 12:14.
A police unit wasn’t available to respond until 12:15 a.m., approximately 20 minutes after the call was received and officers arrived on the scene about 12:20, about 25 minutes after the initial call. Fasold said NOFD units were on the scene when police arrived and two of the children had already been pulled from the house and were being given CPR.
“I don’t believe we dropped any balls,” said Fasold of the 911 call intake and dispatch center. “In retrospect, it’s easy to know, yeah, yeah, it would have been great to send fire as soon as he said he threatened to set a fire… nothing we knew at that time, pushed it past that point.”
Fasold said that he would be in contact with police, fire, EMS and domestic violence agencies to see if different policies and response protocols should be set.
Here is the Call Timeline from the 911 Director
- 11:54:41 PM TUESDAY NIGHT - Initial call made my mother
- 11:55:35 "Incident created" - information being entered - "verbal domestic violence," father on scene, children screaming.
- 11:57:21 More information that children are on scene - ages 3, 5, 7. Father has threatened to burn down house.
- 11:59:27 Incident broadcast on police radio to all units with alert tone. No units are clear to be dispatched.
- 11:59:56 NOPD District Rank notified
- 12:08:05 WEDNESDAY MORNING First call from neighbor reporting a fire taking place
- 12:09:22 Fire department incident created
- 12:09:38 Fire units dispatched to scene
- 12:11:49 Second call reports fire
- 12:13:11 Another call reports fire, says children trapped in home
- 12:14:13 First fire units on scene
- 12:15:15 First police units cleared, dispatched to scene
- 12:16:32 Fire department requests EMS
- 12:18:11 EMS dispatched
- 12:19:22 Two children pulled from home
- 12:20:00 First police on scene
- 12:29:54 First EMS on scene
- 12:32:06 EMS reports working Code 2
- 12:40:06 Fire Department says fire under control
- 12:57:35 EMS transports 2 children