DC leaders for the first time break down recent outages at 911 call center

we are also staying on top of the issues plaguing DC's 911 call center tomorrow the agency's director says she'll be meeting with the DC Fire Chief and deputy mayor of Public Safety on how to improve the 911 system today the agency took questions for the first time since an infant died during a computer outage 7 News Rebeca turko breaks down what happened and what's next officials say they've got a 22-point plan that addresses this outage and nearly 20 recent glitches and interruptions the agency has faced since December now they haven't released that plan publicly yet but they did give a timeline of what happened the day the baby died saying the family was on hold with 911 at one point for 54 seconds they called that weight period unacceptable officials say an IT update sparked the outage when the contractor inadvertently pushed the update through every work agency every work station in the agency instead of just a few that contractor was fired today the center's director spoke for the first time on this calling the outage a systemwide issue no one person did anything in this if one person had done something in this I would be holding them accountable they wouldn't be answering 911 calls or dispatching units at the office of unified Communications the director says they are addressing what happened there and that her meeting tomorrow with the deputy mayor will focus on how they can make the system better reporting in the studio Rebecca turko 7 news now this latest crisis at DC's 911 a series of computer crashes is giving the public another cleare eyy look at the troubled agency that has been unable to break free of problems that delay life-saving help to the DC Community 7 News senior investigative reporter Lisa Fletcher has reported on these critical failures for years and tonight examines how problems arising from the computer crashes underscore longstanding concerns wrong addresses everybody's answering the door slow response times we've been calling for 30 we and a lack of supervision on the call center floor DC's office of unified Communications has a history of repeating errors with deadly consequences well documented in multiple audits that cite systemic problems a lack of transparency and performance below national standards summer of 2022 two babies died in separate incidents the agency refused to share information about either an audit found the call taker logged the wrong address in one of the deaths the agency never acknowledged the mistake in its official incident report in 2023 auditor Cathy Patterson told us that a lack of transparency was a serious and ongoing issue it's not the crime it's the cover up that's a call that should have been investigated there should have been training there should have been some kind of accountability just weeks ago on August second during a computer outage at 911 a 5-month-old died waiting for help a dispatcher sent Crews that were already on a call you can't just dispatch a call you have to know that people are responding and that didn't happen when this baby died and it didn't happen in a bunch of other calls that were dispatched on August 2nd the dispatcher didn't know for 10 to 15 minutes whether any paramedics were responding and it turned out they were not Dave St is a public safety Watchdog who's been tracking the performance of DC's 911 for nearly 40 years I would say right now things are worse now than they've ever been in the wake of the infant death and ongoing computer outage crisis OU director Heather mcgaffin went to Florida to speak at a conference on crisis management invited by Karima Holmes the previous DC director who oversaw the agency during the time period audits identified critical problems serious problems identified during homes that continued under maffin short staffing last month only eight of 66 shifts had adequate Personnel last week maffin reportedly sent an email offering $800 a month to employees to show up to work their scheduled shifts every 911 Center these days is having Staffing problems they're so bad in DC because they got so behind before addressing this issue that they're not being able to answer 911 calls promptly and with a lack of Staffing and training mistakes happen Sheila Shepard died while waiting for an ambulance that was sent to the wrong location David Griffin perished in the Washington Channel after responders were sent to the wrong address 9-year-old yafet Solomon and 40-year-old fitsum kabed died trapped in a fire there was a 4-minute dispatch delay Carol Glover died in the lawn font Metro Fire when more than 20 minutes were lost before DC fire and EMS were correctly dispatched a triple drowning when a car plunged into the Anacostia and Crews were sent to the wrong location miles away every 911 Center makes mistakes but the problem is we've discussed many times Alisa is that they make the same mistakes often at OU they never get Beyond them the problems at 911 really boil down to training and most importantly leadership the leadership has not addressed these problems they keep seeming to spend more time on covering things up rather than trying to fix them last week we requested an interview with ou director Heather mcgaffin and got no response today they held a press conference but we were only allowed to ask limited questions and she deflected when asked why members of the city council were now questioning her ability to run the agency to see all of my investigations on DC's 911 and OU go to WJLA . Lisa Fletcher 7 News straight