999 System Not At Fault Firemen Arrived Late Due To Wrong Info

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The deadly fire in Taman Hungab in Penampang claimed the lives of Matthew Wong, his wife Jecky Vun Kon Fung, and their sons Brendan and Eric. (Facebook pic)KOTA KINABALU: The fire department has revealed that its men arrived late on the scene of a deadly fire because one of the callers gave the wrong address and not because of a problem with the call routing of the emergency response system.
This follows claims that firefighters had lost precious seconds in responding to the blaze that claimed the lives of a family of four in Taman Hungab in Penampang here on Tuesday as the distress call had to be routed to Putrajaya first under the Malaysian Emergency Response Services (MERS999) system.
Expressing the department’s condolences over the deaths, Sabah fire and rescue department director Md Ali Ismail, however, said minutes were lost after the firefighters from the Penampang station missed the location as a result of the inaccurate information provided by the caller.
Ali said the fire started around 2.30am and the firemen arrived at the scene at 3.04am.
The delay was caused because the firemen followed the printed call sheet containing the inaccurate address, he said in a statement here today.
“This led to the team having to get the correct information in order to arrive at the actual location. By the time they arrived, the fire had spread from the ground floor to the top part of the house.”
The fire claimed the lives of Matthew Wong, 50, his wife Jecky Vun Kon Fung, 48, and their sons Brendan, 18, and Eric, 15.
Immediately after the tragedy, chief minister Hajiji Noor called for current procedures in the MERS999 system, now centralised in Putrajaya, to be changed.
He said emergency calls, especially those involving fires and needing urgent help, should not be referred all the way to Putrajaya first.
Former chief minister Shafie Apdal also called for a review of the system, saying an account by a witness shared with the media indicated that the responders were not certain of the exact location of the incident.
Explaining how information on the fire was channelled, Ali said the MERS999 call centre in Melaka was the one that actually received the call, with four calls routed to the centre. The first was recorded at 2:49:01am and the second at 2:49:02am.
He explained that there are three call centres nationwide – in Kuala Lumpur, Melaka and Kuching – to which emergency calls made through 999 would be routed.
At the initial stage, Ali said, the responder at the MERS999 call centre had obtained four basic pieces of information – the name of the caller, the caller’s number, the type of emergency and its location.
“The information was channelled through the computed-aided dispatch system to the Sabah fire operations centre and the Penampang fire station.
“The state fire department received the information at 2:52:21am and immediately sent a team to the fire location,” he said.
At the same time, the worker at the MERS999 call centre remained on the line with the caller, trying to get additional information based on the department’s fire protocol. This information would then be channelled to the Sabah operations centre, Ali said.
He added that two calls on the fire were eventually connected to the Sabah fire operations centre.
Meanwhile, Ali said an investigation by the department’s forensics unit found that an electricity overload on the lower level of the house and a fire load caused the blaze to spread quicker.
He said the estimated “soft time” that the fire started was 2.32am.
“It is believed the victims could not save themselves because the ground floor of the house had been filled by smoke and all the windows and exit doors were installed with grilles besides being locked,” he said. - FMT

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