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MONTGOMERY COUNTYMan Found Dead in Office 10 Hours After 911 Phone Glitch Confuses RescuersWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, April 21, 2006; Page B04
Kaafee Billah walked into his Gaithersburg office shortly before 9 a.m.
Tuesday. The 39-year-old sales representative, who had recently started
working at the medical company
MedImmune Inc., made the first call from his desk at 9:02. Roughly
40 minutes later, he called 911 to say he needed medical help.
Almost 10 hours passed before someone found his body lying on the floor. Police say an apparent phone glitch sent emergency personnel to the wrong address, leading them to believe that the 911 call was unfounded. "There is no way at this time to say if he would have survived the event if rescue personnel had reached him in a timely manner," the police officer who documented his death wrote in a preliminary report. "The error is in the technology of the company phone system." Billah had a brief conversation with a 911 dispatcher, police said. "He was able to communicate a few words before there was no longer communication with him," police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said. Pete Piringer, a spokesman for Montgomery County's Fire and Rescue Service, said: "The caller struggled with the information. He did say he needed an ambulance for chest pains." Billah was not able to provide an address, Baur said. When 911 dispatchers in Montgomery County are unable to get an exact location from a caller or when they receive a call from someone who hangs up, they make an effort to identify the location and send help. A dispatcher sent emergency personnel to the address determined by computerized caller identification: 35 W. Watkins Mill Road, one of several MedImmune buildings in the area. But Billah's office was in an adjacent building: 25 W. Watkins Mill Road. The emergency personnel "searched the premises but did not find the victim," according to the police report. Piringer said they looked for six to seven minutes. About 7 p.m., 911 dispatchers received another call from the MedImmune building at 25 W. Watkins, this time from a worker who had found Billah's body on the floor. The medical examiner's office in Baltimore said yesterday that the cause of death remained under investigation. Police said there is no evidence of foul play. Jamie Lacey, a spokeswoman for MedImmune, confirmed that an employee had died but declined to discuss details. Baur said Billah worked in a private office. "He wasn't in a cubicle in a public area," she said. "His job required travel and, because he was a new employee, he had not developed close friendships with other employees who might have casually visited." Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman, said emergency calls made from some corporate phone systems are sometimes traced to the wrong address because phone lines in multiple buildings are traced to a single location. That is a problem that 911 dispatchers have struggled with for several years, said Bill Cade, director of 911 services and communications center operations at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International. He said large phone systems use technology that can make it hard for emergency personnel to trace the exact location of a call in a business campus or resort. "Readers who work for big businesses might want to ask themselves, 'What's the impact on me if I were to have an emergency in one of these locations?' " Cade said. "They're real issues, and they're everyday issues. We don't know how many times it happens. But if it happens to you, it's one time too many." He said several companies have been reluctant to invest in software that allows emergency responders to trace phone calls in large corporate settings to specific locations. Such programs cost about $10,000, he said. His organization has given awards in recent years to universities and other large institutions that invest in software and technology that allows dispatchers to easily trace emergency calls. Billah's relatives could not be reached. Billah was an immigrant from Bangladesh who obtained a PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 2002. "He was a good student," said William H. Lesser, chairman of the university's Department of Applied Economics and Management. "I know he kept in touch with the department on occasion." Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042001923.html
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