All Pastor Johnny Beasley, Jr. could do was hope and pray after a fish fry ended when someone fainted and crashed into a grease vat.
”We have a member who had hot grease on him,” said a member of the Greater Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church to a 911 operator.
Rufus Benford, Jr. was severely burned when hot grease got on him. The church members called 911 but there wasn’t much luck.
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The first 911 call came at 5:06 p.m.
At that time, Benford was alert and the congregation assumed help would be just around the corner.
However, 20 minutes later, they were still waiting, so they called 911 again as Benford began to lose consciousness.
”We are still waiting for this ambulance to get here, and it’s taking its time, and he’s getting unresponsive,” they said.
The second call was made at 5:25.
Pastor Beasley said they waited another 15 minutes before deciding they couldn’t wait any longer. One of the church’s deacons took Benford to a hospital in his truck.
“We had a man who was severely burned, and paramedics never showed up,” said a church member to a dispatcher on a fourth 911 call.
”There is a learning opportunity for really everyone,” said DeKalb Fire Chief Darnell Fullum.
Chief Fullum said the problem wasn’t response times but how the call was classified.
During the initial 911 call, the caller said Benford was hit by hot grease but said he was alert. Benford can be heard responding to questions from the caller about his age.
So, instead of being classified as a burn, the call was considered to be about a man who had fainted.
”Which is a lower priority call,” Chief Fullum said.
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Pastor Beasley is frustrated. He says they should not have been made a lower priority because Benford was awake during the initial call.
”If it wasn’t so serious, we could have taken care of it ourselves,” Beasley said.
Chief Fulham says the classification system is needed for a county that gets hundreds of calls a day. He says if the severity of the burns was made clear, the response would have been different.
Thankfully, Benford is recovering in Grady Hospital.
So what is the county doing about this? The county will review procedures and see if there were certain things dispatchers should have paid more attention to so the call received more attention.
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