On a website this morning I came across this article titled, “Paramedics Might Have Inadvertently Tipped Off Austin Bomber About Raid” I think a better title for this article might be, “Breakdown In Interagency Communication Nearly Cost Medics Their Lives.” The story is that police preparing to raid the Austin bombers apartment called 911 dispatch to put paramedics on “standby” in case the raid went south; a reasonable precaution. However, the full story didn’t get to the paramedics until AFTER they’d made contact with the roommates of the bomber. This type of miscommunication doesn’t surprise me; but this time the medics walked into what could’ve easily been a catastrophic disaster.
This is complete conjecture, but one factor might’ve been pressure put on 911 dispatchers to dispatch the crew. We all have metrics to meet. For many EMS agencies a response time of 90 seconds or less for “Priority 1” calls is one such metric. 911 operators are also pressured to dispatch calls in a timely manner. The metrics make sense, there needs to be objective measures to rate the quality of care, and response times are one way to do that (I personally find time metrics antiquated but that’s another story). So if 911 operators were under pressure to dispatch the crew before having a complete picture of the scene and medics are under pressure to respond quickly, you can see how this spirals. Being dispatched without a clear picture of the scene happens often and is a reasonable action in most cases. 911 operators aren’t on scene, many times they don’t have a visual picture and the only way to get such a picture is dispatching a crew to investigate. Obviously this time the crew was dispatched to a scene that was dangerously unsafe.
Fortunately, the medics were unharmed. However, if the bomber was tipped off (again, I don’t know the whole story but since the medics didn’t know what they were being dispatched to I find it possible the Austin bomber didn’t know police were closing in just because medics were investigating a call for service. I doubt the medics arrived and said, “hey, is the Austin bomber here? We’re here on standby for the raid team driving down the street”). Regardless, this incident reinforces the need for interagency training. If police don’t understand the requirements 911 is under to dispatch calls, if dispatch doesn’t understand the requirements Fire/EMS are under to respond to calls for service…well, it’s clear next time a pair of medics could easily walk into a house, spook the bomber and be killed.
https://www.statesman.com/news/medic-crew-may-have-tipped-off-austin-bomber-before-police-raid/mPruG6l0Rhwar79i8ATPtJ/
