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Pa. man dies during storm when 911 calls unheeded
AP ^ | 2/28/10 | Dan Nephin

Posted on 02/28/2010 11:59:25 PM PST by malkee

PITTSBURGH – With her boyfriend in severe abdominal pain, Sharon Edge called 911 for an ambulance in the early morning hours of Feb. 6. Heavy snow was falling — so heavy it would all but bring the city to a standstill — and Curtis Mitchell needed to go to a hospital. "Help is on the way," the operator said. It never arrived. Nearly 30 hours later — and 10 calls from the couple to 911, four 911 calls to them and at least a dozen calls between 911 and paramedics — Curtis Mitchell died at his home. His electricity knocked out, his heat long off, the 50-year-old former steelworker waited, huddled beneath blankets on his sofa. "I'm very angry, because I feel they didn't do their job like they supposed to," said Edge, 51. "My man would still be living if they'da did they job like they was supposed to ... They took somebody that I love away." Mitchell, on disability for depression, had a history of pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas, Edge said, and had spent nine days in a hospital in late January. He had been home about a week when he was overcome with pain. Autopsy results are pending, awaiting toxicology test results, authorities said. Now Pittsburgh officials have ordered an investigation and reforms of the city's emergency services system as Mitchell's case highlighted key shortcomings:

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Health/Medicine; Local News; Society
KEYWORDS: 911system; pennsylvania
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To: Lancey Howard

Please see my 20 above.


21 posted on 03/01/2010 12:43:31 AM PST by John Valentine
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To: sfimom

As a volunteer EMT of almost 15 years, I feel horribly bad for this family. However, without knowing what the SOP or protocol is for the duty crew, its hard to judge. If it were my call and I was the crew captain, I would have taken my trauma bag and walked in to render aid. Honestly though, there isnt alot that a BLS crew could have done for the man on their own. You need a paramedic to push meds that would have allievated his pain and a hospital to perform procedures to correct his illness. Also trying to push a man, a quarter mile on a stretcher exposed to the elements in a snowstorm is dicey at best. It also isnt clear what the dispatcher was being told about his condition over the phone, and there are lots of factors that dictate response. What is terrain like where they live etc...Again, my sympathies to the family, but Im pretty sure if the medics could have gotten to him...they would have.


22 posted on 03/01/2010 1:04:01 AM PST by ConservativeNewYorker (FDNY 343 NYPD 23 PAPD 37)
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To: ConservativeNewYorker

From the article:

“We failed this person,” said Michael Huss, the city’s public safety director.

To be sure, Mitchell’s ordeal unfolded as the storm dumped nearly two feet of snow on Pittsburgh; the 911 system was swamped with more than twice as many calls as usual and overall emergency response was hampered.

Regardless of how deep the snow was, Huss said it was unacceptable that paramedics didn’t walk to help Mitchell. If they had, Huss believes Mitchell may have survived.

“... You get out of that damn truck and you walk to the residence,” Huss said. “That’s what needed to happen. We could have carried him out.”

The six paramedics on the three ambulances could be disciplined, Huss said. He declined to say what that might be.

Paramedics or firefighters will now be required to go to a caller’s door.

“Everyone needs to get a response,” Huss said Thursday.


23 posted on 03/01/2010 1:09:46 AM PST by sfimom
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To: Jemian

Hopefully Pittsburgh will add some procedures (such as Denver’s call for volunteers with the proper snow machines).


24 posted on 03/01/2010 1:20:27 AM PST by 21twelve (Having the Democrats in control is like a never-ending game of Calvin ball. (Giotto))
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To: sfimom

That’s what they did for my dad. We live on a very steep hill, and the ambulance could not make it up the hill (too slick). They brought a guerney up the hill, and took him back down to the ambulance.


25 posted on 03/01/2010 2:45:43 AM PST by greeneyes (Moderation in defense of your country is NO virtue. Let Freedom Ring.)
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To: wireplay; Jemian

“Humvees can almost always get through as well as very large SUVs.”

Those aren’t politically correct vehicles, especially since we don’t drill enough oil at home.

Things like this are a result of leftists. And to top it off, the man died during a blizzard, the very thing loony leftists have been claiming to want more of.


26 posted on 03/01/2010 3:07:34 AM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March (Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm. [Geniuses don't pick their nose.])
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*


27 posted on 03/01/2010 3:18:18 AM PST by TornadoAlley3 (Obama is everything Oklahoma is not.)
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To: malkee

I’m in NC, and it’s very rare to get a large snowfall, but it does happen, maybe a once in a decade event. Without fail, there is a call for emergency volunteers with large, four wheel drive vehicles, to take people in for dialysis and such. There are announcements on all the radio stations and the local television news.

Too bad that wasn’t done in this instance.


28 posted on 03/01/2010 3:38:37 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: John Valentine
What is this? I have never seen a newspaper report using dialect like this.

It's called a direct quote. Doing anything else would be wrong.

29 posted on 03/01/2010 3:48:52 AM PST by raybbr
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To: raybbr

No.

You do not have to try to simulate someone’s accent in a direct written quote. If someone drops the final “r” in “your” due to a regional accent, that need not be “reported”.

These guys are not Mark Twain penning Huckleberry Finn.


30 posted on 03/01/2010 3:56:13 AM PST by John Valentine
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To: raybbr

Just to be clear, if you said to me “It’s called a direct quote. Doing anything else would be wrong.” and I reported you as saying “It called a die-rect quote. Doin’ anythin’ else woo’ be wrong,” you would have every reason to complain.

This is not Huckleberry Finn.


31 posted on 03/01/2010 3:59:49 AM PST by John Valentine
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To: John Valentine
"...if they'da did they job..." Disgusting newspaper work, insulting, and maybe racist to boot."

Likely "racial" though maybe doesn't rise to "racist." Sounds to me like the lady ("Edge," was it?) was speaking in what Harry Reid might refer to as some form of "negro dialect." It isn't that our pigmented bretheren are any less intellectually capable of properly phrased speech patterns, they just feel (or at least act as if they feel) that it is somehow "selling out to Whitey" or "turnin' on da bruvvahs" to speak like an intelligent, educated individual.

Enter as evidence our deeply pigmented bretheren Dr. Alan Keyes, or J.C. Watt, or even "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan; they form words and sentences properly despite the same inner city public school beginnings of folks like "Edge" and her man. It's more a cultural choice made early in life and propagated throughout early adulthood than any non-existent DNA borne limitation.

This choice is reinforced by personally destructive cultural influences (like Rap Music, Spike Lee movies, and BET programming) to the point where the deeply pigmented bretheren are basically trapped by the phenomenon appropriately referred to as "Liberal Plantation Mentality" engendered by Democrats and their enablers in the Liberal Controlled Media. Its only virulent and quite successful goal is to keep the deeply pigmented bretheren "down," and reliant on them for their every meager scrap, none of which encourages self-reliance, bootstrap industriousness or independent thought.

Or proper speech patterns. That this news outlet reported factually the soliloquy proffered by "Edge" is only as racist as is accurate reporting on any social phenomenon. The racist element beghins and ends with the entire Liberal Plantation Mentality which nurtured it, the liberal Media which spawns it, and the deeply pigmented bretheren who are duped into believing that following meekly along behind these Machiavellian errata is somehow to their advantage. Clearly, it is not.

;-/

32 posted on 03/01/2010 4:00:25 AM PST by Gargantua (DON'T TREAD ON US.)
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To: malkee

Very sad. Contributing factors were that she is bi-polar and they did not have a car.

The reality is, though, that relying on the government is a mistake. Sometimes, as in this case, the mistake is fatal.


33 posted on 03/01/2010 4:03:04 AM PST by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: lmr

True, my brother almost died from it last summer. He was in the hospital for almost two months. thanks to many prayers from freepers and others, he is doing very well now and it scared him so much he has stopped drinking because of it.


34 posted on 03/01/2010 4:08:03 AM PST by waxer1 ( "The Bible is the rock on which our republic rests." -Andrew Jackson)
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To: John Valentine
"This is not Huckleberry Finn."

You could not possibly be more mistaken. Huckleberry Finn was a novelistic creation of a non-existent reality, created to transport its consumers to a place that exists only in the minds of those who willingly ingest its passages and accept their fallacies; just like Liberal Plantation Mentality.

;-/

35 posted on 03/01/2010 4:09:14 AM PST by Gargantua (DON'T TREAD ON US.)
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To: Persevero

>>>The poor man. What a terrible way to die.

I concur - and I’ve survived pancreatitis. Took more than a year to be able to work again.


36 posted on 03/01/2010 4:11:01 AM PST by Keith in Iowa
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To: sfimom
Pancreatitis has many causes

*******************

Quite right. My dog had pancreatitis a few times. I'm pretty sure he didn't have a drinking problem.

37 posted on 03/01/2010 4:11:56 AM PST by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: John Valentine
Just to be clear, if you said to me “It’s called a direct quote. Doing anything else would be wrong.” and I reported you as saying “It called a die-rect quote. Doin’ anythin’ else woo’ be wrong,” you would have every reason to complain.

Just like she would have every right to complain if the reporter changed her words. BTW, your example makes no sense. You are changing my words whereas the reporter quoted verbatim.

38 posted on 03/01/2010 4:17:44 AM PST by raybbr
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To: Gargantua

See #12.


39 posted on 03/01/2010 4:18:39 AM PST by wideminded
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To: wideminded
It is true that there are cuacasians afflicted by the same man-made social disorder (Liberal Plantation Mentality) which predominates inner-city dwellers regardless of racial complexion. It is a function of geographic environ as much as anything else. Blacks and whites raised in ex-urban or rural communities are less likely to be thus afflicted.

;-/

40 posted on 03/01/2010 4:38:15 AM PST by Gargantua (DON'T TREAD ON US.)
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