Address Mix-up Delays Ambulance For Heart Attack Victim in Wainscott

When Lanny Ross showed the symptoms of a heart attack on Sunday night, his wife, now his widow, called 911, but ambulance personnel who quickly got on the road to bring him help were delayed by what Sherri Ross is calling "one huge mistake."

East Hampton Village dispatchers received the call at 8:14 p.m., according to police records. Ross said she told the dispatcher she thought her husband was having a heart attack and gave him her exact location: 419 Montauk Highway in Wainscott. However, dispatchers toned out the call to the ambulance company from the neighboring fire district and sent them to 419 Montauk Highway in East Hampton instead.

Lanny Ross, 51, was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital at around 9:30 p.m., his widow said.

Kenneth Collum, director of the East Hampton Village Communications Department, confirmed on Friday that Ross gave her exact location, including the hamlet.

"There are four 419 Montauk Highways in East Hampton Town—in East Hampton, Wainscott, Montauk and Amagansett," noted Collum. He explained that the dispatcher punched the address into a computer software program and a drop-down then appeared on his screen to select the correct fire district boundary for the address. The dispatcher simply checked the wrong one, Collum said.

"Obviously, it's unacceptable," he went on to say. "It's something we're looking at … to make this a better procedure to ensure this doesn't happen again." He added, "Everyone knew Lanny," a former chief in the Amagansett Fire Department. "It strikes a different cord with everybody here."

In recalling that night, Ross said, "I told them exactly where we were, and while I was calling 911, I ran downstairs and turned all the lights on so they could find us." She then ran back to her husband's side.

"They asked me if my husband was breathing," she said. "I thought that he was because he was making a grunting sound. They asked me if I could get him on the floor. I asked them when are the ambulance personnel going to be here to help me."

The dispatcher walked her through rescue breathing and chest compressions, she said, but she kept asking about help. "They seemed to be having trouble finding the house. The dispatcher said to turn on an outside light, to send someone down to the driveway. I sent my 16-year-old daughter down. She went out into the street."

"They said, 'There's nothing there'," Ross said. "But I was saying 'I'm here!'"

In fact, nothing exists at 419 Montauk Highway in East Hampton, which should be in the area of  . The distance between 418 Montauk Highway in East Hampton, an address that does exist, and the Ross house in Wainscott is 5.45 miles, about a 12-minute drive in regular traffic.

While Ross said she couldn't gauge how long it actually took ambulance crews to arrive at her house, she said it felt like an eternity. East Hampton Patch has filed a Freedom of Information request with East Hampton Village for a time log of the call.

Collum said the East Hampton ambulance was rerouted shortly after it left the ambulance barn. He said it was the dispatchers who realized the mistake, not those who arrived at the wrong location.

Town officers were also sent to the wrong address. They were the first to arrive at the correct address, followed by East Hampton Village Ambulance Association vehicles, according to Ross. She said she was thankful for the police and ambulance personnel who were "professional, courteous and calming in the middle of this traumatic moment."

Collum explained that two East Hampton ambulances arrived at the scene, the one that signed on after the initial call and another that happened to be on its way back from Southampton Hospital. When the mistake was realized, dispatchers toned out the call to the Bridgehampton Fire Department Ambulance Company, which should have received the call in the first place.  

In total, four advanced emergency medical technicians and one paramedic came to the call, Collum said. Bridgehampton transported the patient to the hospital.

Having just buried her husband on Thursday, Ross is left with questions. "If that call were handled differently, would my husband be alive? If Bridgehampton had been dispatched right away and the police had been dispatched right away, would it have made a difference? We'll never know," she said.

 "We are thoroughly reviewing the details of the call, dispatcher responses, and the computer aids used in this call," East Hampton Village Administrator Larry Cantwell said Friday. "Any changes that need to be made will be implemented forthwith."

According to Collum, one of the problems was that Ross' phone number did not give her location. "It was a 604 number. I'm not sure if it's Vonage or iO. Vonage is a problem for the 911 community because the number can be from anywhere."

Ross, who said she reached out to Cantwell on Friday to ensure the problem would be addressed, said improving the 911 system is what's most important to her. "Just asking the question, 'What happened?,' can save somebody else's life." She said, "Nobody should have to go through what we went through."