Subject: [NEXTEL-1] N.Y. 911 Worker Criticized on Lost Teens

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:51:08 -0500

January 29, 2003

N.Y. 911 Worker Criticized on Lost Teens

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 12:27 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Authorities criticized a 911 supervisor for failing to alert the rescue
squad after a frantic cell phone call
from four teens on a sinking rowboat. The last words from the caller: ``We're gonna die.''

Police released a transcript Tuesday of the brief, harrowing 911 call made as the boat
sank in the frigid waters off City Island last
Friday night.

``Hello ... uh ... we're ... listen ... we're on the Long Island Sound in a boat off the
coast of City I ... we're gonna die,'' one of the
teens says, according to the transcript of the 12-second call.

While noting the call was hard to understand, police officials have recommended
disciplinary action for the 911 supervisor in the case, who violated police procedure by
failing to notify the police harbor unit, police said Tuesday.

The search for the boys' bodies continued. Family members say the four friends -- Charles
Wertenbaker, 16, Andrew Melnikov, 16, Max Guarino, 17, and Henry Badillo, 17 -- planned to
form a band.

The dispatcher entered the boys' call into a log and alerted her supervisor but did not
have enough specific information to enter
the report into the police department system, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. Still,
he said, police procedures called for
911 personnel to notify the harbor unit about what little information they had.

The nearest boat or helicopter could have arrived in about 20 minutes, Kelly said.
Department officials said the boys might have
died by then, but a U.S. Coast Guard official, Petty Officer Michelle Krupa, said the
teens could have survived at least 30
minutes and perhaps as long as two hours.

The water temperature was just 33 degrees.

Eddie Rodriguez, president of the union representing police dispatchers, said he thought
the police department had rushed to
judgment about the supervisor's actions.

The city's 911 system does not include technology that would enable dispatchers to trace
emergency calls to a specific location.

Two New York City congressmen, Anthony Weiner and Joseph Crowley, called on federal
regulators Tuesday to speed up
requirements for such technology. And Sen. Chuck Schumer wrote state officials urging them
to move ahead with technical
upgrades.

The technology -- coupled with improvements to state and county 911 call centers -- is not
required by federal regulators until
2005 but is available already in some parts of the country.

City Island is one of the smaller islands that make up New York City. It is part of the
Bronx. Authorities believe the boys were
setting off for another, even smaller island nearby.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missing-Teens.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

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