An infant died after going into cardiac arrest in Northwest D.C. Friday afternoon during an outage of the computer system the District uses to dispatch fire engines and ambulances, but there’s no indication delays contributed to the baby’s death.
The Office of Unified Communications (OUC), which runs the system, said during that time, 911 calls were still answered.
One of them was from an apartment in the 3000 block of Connecticut Avenue NW, where a baby was in distress. Frustration is heard in the voices of the first responders.
“We have an infant in cardiac arrest,” one said. “I’ve made everyone aware of this multiple times here on this channel … Do we have an ALS unit or a paramedic that is possibly available?”
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A few hours later, D.C. police detectives and forensic investigators arrived at the building after being informed that the infant, described as about 4 or 5 months old, had been pronounced dead.
“By my count, this is the fifth time since May 23 that their system has gone down,” said Dave Statter, a journalist with expertise in fire and EMS agencies. “One of them was the global Crowdstrike failure that impacted a lot of 911 centers and other agencies, but the four other times, they’ve never given an explanation.”
OUC did not specify how long the outage lasted or the timeframe.
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The 911 call for the infant in cardiac arrest was made at 2:23 p.m., according to D.C. police. Two minutes later, a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, from OUC announced technical difficulties with the computer-aided dispatch system.
“If you remember and recall because of their staffing shortages, we’re already in a situation when people call 911, they don’t get a prompt answer, and now you get delays,” Statter said. “And it’s pretty sad in some of the things that have happened. People wait for service, and there was one today.”
D.C. police are investigating the baby’s death. There’s no indication that the computer outage contributed to the baby’s death.
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