By Joanna Smith
The Toronto Star
Copyright 2006 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Paramedics responding to a fatal fire in west Toronto ended up arriving at the scene half an hour late because a dispatcher mistakenly sent them to the opposite end of the city — to another street with the same name.
The paramedic crew received a call to go to a one-alarm fire at 11: 46 a.m. yesterday in a room on the third floor of Grigg’s Manor, an independent-living apartment building for senior citizens at 100 Cavell Ave., just west of Royal York Rd. near the Mimico GO Train station.
But because the call receiver didn’t cross-check the intersection, as protocol requires, the paramedic crew instead rushed to another 100 Cavell Ave., this one in the Pape and Danforth Aves. area of Toronto.
Confusion over streets with the same name is an issue that has haunted Toronto since North York, Toronto, Etobicoke, Scarborough and East York merged into one big city in 1998.
After years of hand-wringing and study that cost at least $500,000, city council voted unanimously in December 2004, to maintain duplicate street names across the city, despite the confusion they might cause.
Firefighters who arrived within four minutes of the call found a 65-year-old woman in her room with vital signs absent, Toronto Fire spokesperson Stephan Powell said.
"(Firefighters) started to perform CPR and transferred her to the ambulance when it arrived,” Powell said.
Toronto Fire does not take patients to hospital because they don’t have the “means” to do it, he said.
“It looks like the procedure wasn’t followed,” EMS spokesperson Larry Roberts said yesterday following an internal investigation of the incident.
“We regret the delay in response,” Roberts said, offering his condolences to the victim’s family.
The original rationale for eliminating street name duplication (in 96 cases) and triplication (in four more) came from Bell Canada, which administers 911 emergency service and expressed concern that emergency vehicles could be misdirected to the wrong address.
Bill Crowther, executive director of technical services for the city, said in an interview yesterday that city staff has had no further direction from council since being told to drop the issue.
A woman who works as a caregiver for some tenants at Grigg’s Manor, which is operated by the Toronto Community Housing Corp., said when the building’s smoke alarms started going off, residents were instructed to remain in their rooms.She said the fire was contained to the woman’s room and did not affect the other floors in the seven-storey building, said the caregiver, who did not want to give her name.
Powell said the fire marshal has been called in to investigate and it looks as if careless smoking caused the fire.
Roberts said EMS will review the procedure and retrain employees to ensure mistakes like this do not happen in the future.
“The public should be reassured we have these procedures in place,” Roberts said.