Boston FD Dispatcher helps save 5 workers

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Persistent fire dispatcher helps save 5 workers

He finds location of emergency call

By Cristina Silva, Globe Staff

The Boston Globe

April 22, 2006

Using his cellphone, the man told the 911 operator that three people were dizzy from fumes from a forklift, but hung up before the call was transferred to the Boston Fire Department.

When Fire Department dispatcher Jack McKenna Jr. received the report about 11:38 a.m. on Thursday, he called the man back and asked him where the sick people were.

But the man, who did not identify himself, said everyone was out of the building and hung up saying, ''We are all set," according to a recording of the call.

But McKenna, still without an address continued to follow up on the call, he recalled during a ceremony yesterday at the Boston Fire Department headquarters in Roxbury, where he received a citation for helping rescue officials locate the carbon-monoxide poisoning victims.

Five people were treated, even though the caller thought only three people were affected.

Because the man called from a cellphone, McKenna did not immediately know where the call was being placed from, he said.

McKenna got a break when he called the number back a second time and got the man's voice- mail message, which included the name of the company. The dispatcher then called 411 for the address of Whitney Building Products, a cement firm on Harrison Street.

When emergency personnel, dispatched by McKenna, arrived, they found one woman and four male victims suffering from high levels of carbon-monoxide poisoning, said acting Fire Commissioner Kevin MacCurtain before the ceremony.

The victims were dizzy, nauseous, red-faced, and one of them was vomiting, MacCurtain said.

The employees were treated at Massachusetts General Hospital and released Thursday night. They were exposed to the fumes after a faulty forklift filled the warehouse with the gas, MacCurtain said.

McKenna, who has been working as a dispatcher since September 2005, said any of his co-workers would have done the same thing.

''You don't know if it is an emergency issue or an accident, so you always want to follow up on it," he said.

All five employees, who were at work yesterday, said they felt well and were grateful for McKenna's persistence.

''We are just real proud of him for helping us and keeping at it," said John Mortiner, one of the victims and a sales manager at the company.

Mortiner said he did not know who placed the 911 call.

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With all the negative on Dispatches lately, this one is a good story.