911 call in Fort Wayne deadly fire: Caller wasn’t asked which side of town for more than four minutes.

Journal-Gazette photo

Listen to the 911 call from triple-fatal Fort Wayne fire

Read WANE-TV’s story about the 911 call

On Monday, when we first told you about the triple-fatal fire in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the city had given the impression the woman who reported the fire gave the wrong address to the call taker. A pregnant woman and her two young sons died in the fire. Fort Wayne’s fire chief Peter Kelley said at the time the house was so far gone the delay likely didn’t impact the tragic outcome. The fire department was originally sent more than a mile away to West Jefferson Boulevard instead of East Jefferson.

Listening to the 911 call released on Friday paints a very different picture about the role of the caller in the delay and brings up some serious questions about the handling of the emergency. The caller, Heather Kennedy, first told 911 the fire was in the 900 block of Jefferson, but never said east or west. And for more than four minutes the call taker didn’t ask that question.

The only discussion initially of a compass direction came at about 40-seconds into the call when the 911 call taker asked if the fire was on the north or south side of the street. Kennedy repeated what her boyfriend can be clearly heard saying in the background, “It’s actually on the east side”.

At about 2:36 into the call the call taker is heard asking someone else at the 911 center, “How come it has not been dispatched?”. Five seconds later the call taker said, “There it goes”.

At 4:20 the call taker asked Kennedy, “You said West Jefferson, correct?”. In fact, Kennedy was never heard saying “West Jefferson” on the recording released by the city. Kennedy replied, “Oh yes, you can’t miss it there’s a ton of frickin’ smoke”.

At 5:00 into the call the call taker asked Kennedy, “You sure it’s West Jefferson and not East Jefferson? It’s between Van Buren and Broadway?”.

At 5:29 Kennedy gave the call taker the cross street of Hanna which finally made her realize the call was dispatched for the wrong side of town. The call taker told Heather Kennedy, “When you gave us west, we went west”.

In a News-Sentinel article that came out before the release of the 911 audio, Heather Kennedy second guessed herself about what she did or didn’t tell 911:

“I keep going over and over in my mind what I said. Did I tell them West Jefferson? I don’t believe I did,” Kennedy said. “It’s weighed so heavy on my mind. It’s horrible. The whole experience is horrible.”

Here is what the Fort Wayne Fire Department said about Kennedy’s call in its official statement Monday on the controversy:

The initial caller was in an alley behind the house and gave the address as being in the 800 block of Jefferson and said the building was totally on fire. Upon further questioning by the dispatcher the caller believed the address to be on West Jefferson. Initial dispatches to responding units informed them to respond to the West Jefferson. As a result of further questioning the initial caller realized the cross-street nearest the house fire was Hannah Street and at this time that the dispatchers rerouted the responding emergency crews to the East Jefferson location.

From listening to the audio, is it accurate to say “the caller believed the address to be on West Jefferson”? It appears that Heather Kennedy didn’t indicate east or west until almost 1:45 seconds after the call was dispatched (4:20 into the call). Even then it was not a real positive answer that Kennedy knew exactly where she was.

A lot has changed in the 30-years since I have handled 911 calls. One thing that hasn’t changed is that people passing through an area who see an emergency often don’t know exactly where they are or are too excited to relay the proper information. That has been compounded by the invention of the cell phone.

STATter911.com has a lot of readers who work in 911 centers across the country. I have a question for you. When you now add the audio and the timeline to the information provided in the fire department’s initial statement, do you really believe this one can be blamed on the caller?