NAPLES, Fla. — Mary Catania’s last moments were captured in a frantic 3-minute, 6-second 911 call.
“It’s goin’ down fast! I can’t get out of the car,” Catania said as her 2009 Hyundai Sonata sank in a retention pond in a gated community near Marco Island, Fla.
“I don’t know how to swim! I don’t know how to swim,” she told a Collier County Sheriff’s Office dispatcher.
In taking the call, the dispatcher followed a procedure used nationwide. Escape instructions come at the end of that procedure. Catania was never told to get out of her car.
The 58-year-old sank to her death Nov. 2 in the most deadly type of single-vehicle accident that motorists can be involved in. Vehicle submersions account for up to 11 percent of all drownings.
Gordon Giesbrecht, a vehicle submersion researcher, has determined the most probable contributor to the drownings is the often contradictory, inadequate or even incorrect escape instructions provided by “authorities” or believed by the public.
“I tell people, ‘Don’t touch your cell phone. If you touch your cell phone, you are going to die,’” Giesbrecht said.
Giesbrecht said motorists in a sinking car should try to escape by immediately unbuckling seat belts, rolling down or breaking a side window, freeing children and getting out, sending children through the window first.
“We cannot think of any reason why you would ever wait,” Giesbrecht said. “You keep trying until you are dead.”
Spurred by Catania’s 911 call and Giesbrecht’s studies, the Naples Daily News examined what public safety agencies are doing to help ensure that motorists can escape sinking vehicle accidents. The investigation found:
• Despite years of calls like Catania’s, dispatchers rarely provide adequate escape instructions before callers sink to their deaths.
• Many more such deaths occur in Florida — a popular tourist destination — than in any other state, but Florida’s driver education classes aren’t required to teach vehicle escape and the state driver’s manual doesn’t mention it.
• The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), determined in its only report on the subject that just five people drown in their vehicles per year, a conclusion two researchers called ridiculous. An agency proposal currently in the approval process may lead to an increase in the use of stronger glass on side windows, which some believe will make vehicle escape even harder.
Giesbrecht, a kinesiology professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, has sunk more than 100 cars and trucks in two studies. He has determined that water outside a sinking car can rise to its windows in as little as 15 seconds, and after that pressure is applied to the windows, survival is far more difficult. Calling 911 will waste life-saving seconds.
The Daily News reviewed media reports or recordings made since 2006 of seven 911 calls similar to Catania’s. None of the callers escaped on their own, but one caller immediately gave her location near a police station and was rescued. In two other calls, witnesses guided rescuers to the scene or conducted their own rescue, but all other callers died.
• In June, Eva Rubino of Coral Springs, Fla., called 911, immediately gave her location near a police station and was rescued as the water rose to her nose.
• In February, Umberto Delgado called 911 from an Ocoee, Fla., retention pond and gave his address. He wasn’t told to get out through a window.
• In September 2009, Seydi Burciaga was caught in a flood in Lawrenceville, Ga. In a 10-minute call, she refused to go out a window because of rushing water. Her body was found two hours later.
• In December 2008, Joseph and Leelamma Methai called from a retention pond in Missouri City, Texas. Dispatchers couldn’t determine their location.
• In April 2008, four friends in an SUV sinking in a cold river in Stillwater, Minn., called 911. An accident witness guided rescuers. Two friends died and the other two survived after weeks in the hospital.
• Also in April 2008, Kristen Anet Sanchez called 911 from a pond in Texas City, Texas. It took authorities nearly 30 minutes to find her body.
• In January 2006, a Honolulu girl called 911 to report she was sinking in her car with her grandfather. An accident witness saved her, but her grandfather died.
In taking calls, dispatchers are trained to obtain a caller’s location and ask other “intake questions” before sharing “pre-arrival instructions” aimed at saving lives.
The dispatcher handling Catania’s call followed protocol, said Capt. Roy Arigo of the Collier County Sheriff’s administrative division.
“She tried to get the location, which is probably the most important thing that we need to find out,” Arigo said.
In all but one call reviewed by the Daily News, callers didn’t know their location, couldn’t be understood or were asked numerous times for more specifics.
Giesbrecht recommended that motorists equip their cars with an instrument for breaking windows, such as the $10 ResQMe, with a spring-loaded center punch that shatters tempered glass.
“Every car should have a ResQMe hanging from its sun visor,” said Giesbrecht, who will present his own protocol at a dispatching conference next year.
(Contact Matt Clark at mclark(at)naplesnews.com. To read several crash reports or listen to 911 calls, see the Naples News website at http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/dec/11/florida-drown-car-canal-lake-fatal-Mary-Catania/ )
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