Human Error Delayed Firefighters In Fire That Killed 2: Police

WAUKESHA, WI — Human error caused firefighters to arrive late to an apartment fire that killed two people in March, an investigation report from the Waukesha Police Department showed.

Kevin and Kim McQuade died in the fire that broke out at 1211 Lambeth Road on March 9, police said. A woman in her 20s was also seriously burned.

A fire dispatcher failed to alert fire stations to the apartment fire within a minute of receiving the call, a 284-page report showed.

Multiple protocols were performed improperly or left out entirely, police said. "One stands out the most notable, the fire dispatcher failed to manually activate station alerting within one minute of the fire call being entered in the Computer Aided Dispatch system," the report said.

The first 911 call came in at 1:25 a.m., but fire crews didn't arrive until 1:36 a.m., the report showed. The dispatcher, who is unnamed, didn't manually alert nearby fire stations until 1:30 a.m., by which time police had already arrived at the scene.

Fire crews arrived 11 minutes after the call, while Waukesha Fire Department guidelines call for crews to respond within six minutes, the report showed.

The fire dispatcher, one of three workers at the city dispatch center, usually handled 911 emergency calls and fire radio traffic, police said. The dispatcher has worked at the City of Waukesha Communications Center for five years.

Two other workers, who handle non-emergency and police calls, have nine years and six years of experience working for the city, police said. All three workers had emergency dispatch experience at other agencies.

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