Area Code Shift Leaves 911 Helpless No Address Comes Up For Girl Suffering Asthma Attack

Calling 911 for help could have been disastrous for a 14-year-old Bonney Lake girl suffering a severe asthma attack. Local emergency systems failed to recognize her new 253 area code.

Dispatcher Donna Ferris says she knew something was wrong as soon as the call came in on April 30, three days after two new area codes took effect in Western Washington. The new codes - 253 and 425 - are taking part of the load of telephone traffic in the former 206 area.

“There was no information coming up as to where her address was,” Ferris said. “We got the phone number and ‘No Record Found.”’ And the girl’s asthma made it difficult for her to help out.

“The girl on the other end was in very obvious distress,” Ferris said. “She couldn’t speak that well.”

“We came close to a wrongful death,” 911 manager John Wilding said Wednesday.

“The scary part,” he said, “is that if she had not been able to talk, there was no way to trace the call and it could have been very literally hours.”

Dispatchers managed to work around the problem and sent help to the teen in time.

The state Utility and Transportation Commission planned to meet with U S West representatives to discuss the incident, commission spokeswoman Marilyn Meehan said.

U S West spokeswoman Dana Smith said the company has corrected the problem, which could have affected all local customers who received new phone numbers about the time of the area code change.

She was unable to say how many or which customers were affected, but said the problem with the Bonney Lake call appeared to have been isolated. No similar complaints have been made.

That’s no excuse for what happened, Wilding said.

“No one who has received new telephone service during this time period was in the 911 database,” he said. “This is absolutely the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

Robert Oenning, the state’s 911 director, said someone with U S West should have been responsible for testing the new area code’s connection to 911 before it went public.

“I’m kind of at a loss as to why this happened,” he said.

For now, U S West has given new numbers the 206 area code so the 911 systems can read their information. The company expects to have a lasting solution by the time the new area codes become permanent in November.

Because the teen lives in unincorporated Pierce County, her call to 911 automatically went to the Law Enforcement Support Agency Center in downtown Tacoma.

Instead of showing the girl’s phone number, address and emergency service agencies in her area, the computer screen only displayed her phone number, Wilding said.

Because of that, operators had to get the information they needed from the stricken girl.

The call was transferred one more time before it reached Ferris at the Bonney Lake Public Safety Communications Center.