911 Error Sends Firemen to Wrong House

A mistake by a 911 operator sent a fire truck to a wrong address in Queens, N.Y., where a house fire killed three people on Saturday.

The New York Post reports that the operator mistakenly typed a "2" instead of a "5" in the address. The firefighters were sent to an address three blocks away from where the actual fire was.

By the time the fire trucks made it to the correct address, which was 4 minutes and 55 seconds after the 911 call was made, two people had died. Another person who was rescued at the house later died at a local hospital.

"If we arrived quicker, those people would have a better chance of surviving," said Leroy McGinnis of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. "We believe the time difference could be up to 2 1/2 minutes."

FDNY spokesman Jim Long told the Post that other units were already at the scene when the delayed unit arrived and said the error "was addressed within a timely manner ... We still had a very good response time."

In August a Georgia woman died while waiting for an ambulance that a 911 operator sent to the wrong address. The Fulton County 911 director said that the operator heard the wrong address over the phone, but should have recognized that the address was wrong since the cell phone tower showed the call coming from a completely different area. The ambulance was delayed 25 minutes and the 911 operator was fired.