Firefighters walk into life-threatening situations as system fault does not alert that a patient was armed

In one incident firefighters walked into a life-threatening situation after the fault prevented them from receiving a crucial warning.

A fault in an electronic communications system used by emergency services is putting the lives of frontline workers at immediate risk, a union warns.

An urgent high-level meeting was held yesterday over the risk.

In one incident on the Coromandel, firefighters walked into a life-threatening situation after the fault prevented them from receiving a crucial warning that the "patient has a gun on him". The message was logged with ambulance communications staff but never made it to Fire Service dispatchers, who unwittingly sent the firefighters to be confronted by the gun-wielding man.

The incident, in November last year, is one of four examples outlined in a memo from the firefighters' union to bosses complaining about the faulty system, which it is claimed is putting the lives of firefighters and victims at risk.

"The risk is unacceptable and needs to be urgently addressed," the memo reads.

The safety concerns sparked a high-level meeting yesterday between representatives from police and ambulance, and the company who developed the software. The situation is so bad emergency services are following up warning messages with phone calls to ensure high-risk alerts get through.

In the Coromandel incident, firefighters received a direct warning from ambulance staff just before arriving at the scene where they discovered the man had eight rounds of ammunition and one had already been discharged. The firefighters secured the weapon.

Other messages that never got through include:

• That a patient was "possibly violent" when Albany firefighters responded to a medical event in Dairy Flat in October last year

• That firefighters could be stood down from a job

• That a rescue helicopter would arrive in 12 minutes.

The Herald understands there have been other fault incidents since the InterCAD system was implemented in 2009.

Developed by software company Intergraph, InterCAD links St John, Fire Service and police information systems, allowing electronic messages to be sent between the three agencies. The software won the Excellence in Networked Government category of the 2010 annual Institute of Public Administration of New Zealand awards.

But in the memo from the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union, fire dispatchers claim the fault has been ongoing.

A similar complaint was raised with the Fire Service in March last year but nothing changed, it states.

Fire Service enhanced medical response programme manager Paul Turner admitted the service knew about the fault but had "dropped the ball" in getting it fixed.

He and representatives from police and ambulance met with Intergraph yesterday to highlight the seriousness of the situation.

"Now it's been escalated via the union we've managed to get to a higher level ... and really impress upon the providers that this is a serious issue."

He said Intergraph was now planning a series of "aggressive" tests next week to determine the fault cause and fix it within weeks.

Mr Turner said that in the meantime the agencies would follow up vital warning messages manually, with phone calls.

Union national secretary Derek Best said the union was worried about the safety of its 1900 members and was concerned about how long it might take to fix the fault.

St John assistant operations director of clinical control services Lee Brooks said St John was not aware of any incidents where ambulance staff had been put at risk, while a police spokesman said there had not been any safety concerns raised internally by police about an InterCAD fault.

Intergraph did not respond to Herald inquiries.

What is InterCAD?
InterCAD is a software system that provides an electronic bridge between New Zealand's emergency services; police, the Fire Service and ambulance. Police and the Fire Service use the same communication system but ambulance uses a different one, which meant before the system was implemented in 2009, information from a 111 call that required another service to attend had to be passed on by phone, sometimes causing delays and errors.

What does InterCAD do?
When working effectively it allows essential information provided by 111 callers to be shared immediately between the three agencies. An event is created by the service receiving the call and all three services receive the dispatch information simultaneously via the computer system.