Responders kick in wrong door

WASILLA — Medics and police responding to a call of a man on the floor suffering a heart attack inadvertently broke down the wrong person’s door.

According to a Wasilla Police Department press release, the call to respond to the home on Glacier Avenue — which is just south of Spruce Avenue and east of Church Road — came in at 9:17 a.m., March 8.

“Police received a request from Mat-Su Borough (Emergency Medical Services) to assist them with entry into a residence,” the report states. “Officers arrived on scene and made entry into the residence, only to find out that EMS had the wrong address.”

But exactly how the wrong door came to be knocked down is an open question.

Jon Owen, director of Emergency Services for the city of Palmer, oversees the dispatch center that handles medical calls in the Mat-Su Borough. Owen said he’s investigated the incident and cannot find a time on the tapes when a dispatcher gives anything but the correct address.

Brian Wallace, EMS chief for the more populated areas of the borough, said after interviewing the people involved, his opinion is that a miscommunication occurred. Either way, the delay only cost responders three minutes, according to Owen’s investigation, and the door was repaired.

“Fortunately, Taylored Restoration, they work with us really, really well and help us out in the spur of the moment when we do something like this,” Wallace said.

Wasilla police report the restoration company donated the repairs and the door “as a gesture of community service under the circumstances.”

Police estimate the value of the donation at $450.

Wallace said that upon arriving at the correct house, responders rendered aid to the patient, who is now doing fine. As for the door, he said hopes everything has been smoothed over.

“The lady that we intruded into her house, she wasn’t happy, but I think that aspect was satisfied,” Wallace said.

Asked how often this sort of thing happens, Wallace offered a few answers. First is that kicking in a door isn’t exactly standard procedure.

“We try not to break into people’s houses unless it’s obvious that this particular call has somebody that could not get off the ground,” Wallace said.

But kicking in the wrong door isn’t the only thing that can go wrong on a call. Imagine navigating a gurney through a kitchen, he said. Equipment sometimes can punch through refrigerators; blood splatters on furniture; and mud can get tracked all over the carpet.

“We try to prevent these things, obviously, as much as we can, but sometimes human nature prevails,” Wallace said. “We’re challenged every day. I think that we do a really good job in preventing things, and we try not to make the same mistakes over and over.”

His third answer? Though neither was the case this time, sometimes homeowners and emergency dispatch computers don’t make it easy.

“Our enhanced 911 system sometimes puts us in the right place, sometimes doesn’t,” Wallace said of programs that track where a caller is located.

Then there are unmarked houses. The borough’s Department of Emergency Services is on what seems like a never-ending campaign to educate the public on the importance of having house numbers posted in a spot visible from the road.

Compounding that problem is this winter’s above average snowfall, which has covered some residences’ house numbers.

Wallace said that sometimes the conversations between dispatchers and medics heading to an unmarked house border on the absurd.

You can hear them on the radio saying things like, “You’ll go down this driveway to the left and you’ll see a big — I mean a big — iron carrot,” Wallace said. Or, “You’ll see a big, big red rock, don’t turn at the red rock, you want to go to the blue rock and turn left at the blue rock.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.