Montreal ambulance service blames 'technical glitch' for failing to respond to call

A Montrealman is furious the city's ambulanceservice,Urgences-Sant, never sent himan ambulance after he first called for help.

Walid Zawahiri was watching TV at home in Pierrefondson Montreal's West Islandshortly after midnight last Oct. 7when he began to have chest pains.

• READ MORE:Urgences-Sant's delayed response points to larger problems, union says

In a911 audio recording obtained by CBC Montreal Investigates, Zawahiri, 53, can be heard struggling for breath.

At some points, he has difficulty answering the operator's questions because he's in so much pain.

"I start talking to God and tell him, if you want me, I am ready to go," Zawahiri recalls.

Listen to an excerpt of the first 911 call on Oct. 7:

Distressed heart attack victim calls 911

9 years ago

Duration 0:51

Walid Zawahiri's first call to 911 on Oct. 7. Urgence-Sant's operator says paramedics are on their way.

During the first call, the operator assured him several times an ambulance was on the way.

Zawahiriwaited for an hour, butthere was no sign of an ambulance or a fire truck with first responders. Although Zawahiri's symptoms had eased somewhat by then, hecalled 911 a second timeto find out why the ambulance hadn't arrived.

"I'd love to know, when are the paramedics coming?"Zawahirisaidin the 911 recording of the second call. "It's been an hour. Are they coming from Toronto?"

Listen to an excerptfrom the second 911 call, an hour later:

Walid Zawahiri calls 911 a 2nd time

9 years ago

Duration 0:37

A heart attack victim had to call Urgences-Sant twice before an ambulance was dispatched to him.

In thesecond audio recording, the operator appears to be checking,but training dictates staff quickly move on to triage the patient, which she did.

She told him she was sending paramedics.

When Zawahiri realized Urgences-Sant may have forgotten about him, he got angry and tried to cancel the ambulance.He said he'd go to the hospital the next day.

The operator insisted he let paramedics evaluate him. A fire truck with first responders arrived about 10 minutes afterZawahiri's second call, followed by an ambulance with paramedics.

Lucky to be alive

They checked his blood pressure and heart rate and wanted to transport him to the hospital.

"I refused to go with them," said Zawahiri. "At that moment, I was so angry, I was so mad. I didn't want to see their faces anymore."

The next morning, Oct. 8, Zawahiricalled 911 again with chest pains.

This time, Urgences-Sant responded quickly, andhe was taken by ambulance to SacrCoeur Hospital where he had an angioplasty, a procedure that unblocks arteries to the heart.

Zawahiri said his doctor told him he was lucky to be alive.

Zawahiri contacted CBC Montreal Investigates after his release from hospitalto help him find out why Urgences-Sant didn't send an ambulance the first time he called.

CBCwas able to obtain Zawahiri'ssecond Oct. 7 call along with the one he made on Oct. 8,as well as medical documents from Urgences-Santbut not the original call he placed when he first started having chest pains.

Urgences-Sant said that's all it had.

CBC contacted Zawahiri'sphone company to find proof that call existed. Although Zawahiri's 911 calls didn't appear on his cellphone bill, Rogers Communications was able to provide the time and duration of that emergency callconfirming he had indeed made three calls to Urgences-Sant.

Confronted with this information, Urgences-Sant gave CBC the audio of thefirst Oct. 7call, claiming it couldn't find the call initially because it was logged to the wrong address.

Technical glitch

In the 911 audio recording of Zawahiri's first call on Oct. 7, the operator tells him an ambulance is on the way.

Urgences-Sant said it did dispatchan ambulance, but to the wrong addressthat of a previous caller.

That caller, a personwith similar symptoms, had just hung up when Zawahiri's call came in. Somehow, Urgences-Sant said, that person's address was transposedonto Zawahiri's file.

"We wrongly made the association of the voice with the wrong data or address," said Vincent Brouillard, chief of operations for Urgences-Sant's call centre.

Brouillard said anew computer systemwas being updated at the time of Zawahiri's call. He blamed a "technical glitch" for the errorand said the safeguards in place to catch these kinds of mistakesfailed.

"Usually people catch it," said Brouillard. "Our team is welltrained, and they catch it."

"But this particular situation, since it happened rarely to us, it kind of went, sadly, under the radar."

Red flagnot investigated

Brouillard said soon after Zawahiri'sfirst call on Oct. 7,there were suspicions an error had been made,because two ambulances were dispatched to the same address.

That address was the home of the person who had called a few seconds before Zawahiri.

We thought it was two calls from the same address,- Urgences-Sant call centre's operations chief Vincent Brouillard

When Urgences-Sant realized it had sent two ambulances to the same place, it cancelled the second ambulance the one thatshouldhave gone to Zawahiri.

Brouillard said any concerns Urgences-Santoperators mighthave had thata second caller hadbeen overlooked would have beendismissed when paramedics at the first location confirmed it had a patient being transported to hospital.

"We thought it was two calls from the same address," said Brouillard.

System-wide check

Urgences-Sant said it only retraced its steps after CBC Montreal Investigates brought Zawahiri's first call to itsattention.

Based on the time CBC Montreal Investigates gave Urgences-Sant, technicians were able to track downthe call.

"Nothing was reported before you (CBC) told us," said Brouillard.

When asked how paramedics could confuse the details of the previous caller's with Zawahiri's, Brouillard would only say the situations were similar.

• READ PART 2:Urgences-Sant's delayed response points to larger problems, union says

Callers are told to call back if anything changes.

"It was only an hour later he called back, and we could capture there was a problem with the initial call," said Brouillard.

Although Zawahiri insisted he hadcalled an hour earlier, no red flagwent up after his second call to indicate there had been a problem.

"Unfortunately, people didn't make the connection," said Brouillard.

An internal investigation is underway,and more technical checks are being put in placeto track allcalls from the moment they enter the system. Urgences-Sant is also improving stafftraining to catch these kind of mistakes.

So far, Urgences-Sant said it has discoveredno other mishandled calls.

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