Changes
DENVER (CBS4) ― Rescue personnel in Adams County are changing the way they respond to water rescues after a CBS4 investigation pointed out response problems to a drowning in Commerce City last December.
Laura Mae Wallace fell through ice covering a pond at the Buffalo Run Golf Course Dec. 2. She was apparently chasing her dogs. Wallace drowned.
Now, ADCOM, the Adams County Communications center, says it is making several significant changes to protocol for responding to similar ice and water rescue calls.
Rene Dominguez, lead dispatcher for ADCOM, said these are "big changes for us."
Up until now, ADCOM would not request a dive rescue team until a "first responder" -- fire or police -- were on scene and had confirmed someone was in the water. Now, said Dominguez, "If anybody, including citizens, tells us someone has fallen through, or is in the water, we will automatically start the metro dive team. It used to be we would wait for confirmation from a first responder or someone else on scene. It should lessen the time it takes for the metro dive team to arrive on scene for any of our municipalities."
The earlier CBS4 investigation revealed it took 27 minutes for the first metro dive team to arrive at the pond and 38 minutes for the second dive team to get to the scene.
The CBS4 investigation also revealed that when the 19-year-old woman was struggling to stay alive, a fully equipped dive team, approximately 10 minutes away, was never called. The Denver Fire Department had two dive teams on duty that Sunday morning, both closer than the metro dive team units, but Denver Fire was never contacted for assistance. A Denver Fire Department spokesperson previously said DFD would have dispatched its dive teams, but it was never asked.
Now Dominguez said the Denver Fire Department's dive teams will begin training with the metro dive teams so that they can work well together and respond on the same incidents. The DFD dive teams will now likely be called when water rescues are needed in Adams County, something that was not happening before.
"If needed, all of our fire response agencies have been notified they have the option to ask us to call Denver to see what their response time is as opposed to the metro dive team," Dominguez said. "It'll give us a broader spectrum of who we can call with quicker response time ... in the long run it will give us more options of agencies to call for assistance," said Dominguez.
Lt. Phil Champagne, a spokesperson for the Denver Fire Department, said the new agreement grew out of discussions between the Denver Fire Department, ADCOM and fire departments in Adams County following the CBS4 investigation. He called those discussions "fruitful."