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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Friday, July 03, 2009
Lost Hiker Was Rerouted by Signal Tower
By Vic Vela
Journal Staff Writer
Communication between hiker Megumi Yamamoto's cell phone and signal towers was lost through rerouting, causing her to continually be transferred away from 911 operators after she became lost on Santa Fe Baldy earlier this month, according to a Santa Fe County investigation.
Yamamoto and a State Police Sgt. Andy Tingwall, a pilot, died after the chopper sent up to rescue the 26-year-old University of New Mexico graduate student crashed on June 9.
After Yamamoto — who was hiking with her boyfriend — became lost on the mountain, she dialled 911 on her cell phone. But her calls were repeatedly routed to a non-emergency administrative phone line at the county's Regional Emergency Communication Center, the investigation shows.
Staff there — not realizing that she had been calling 911 — repeatedly told Yamamoto to hang up and call the emergency number. However, Yamamoto kept telling operators that she was dialling 911. She at one point was connected to State Police dispatch, but somehow got disconnected. She then continued dialling the emergency number but was routed back to the non-emergency number each time.
“The dispatchers were trying desperately to get a triangulation by having the call come in on a 911 line,” according to Sheriff Greg Solano's press release on the investigation. “At no time was Ms. Yamamoto not in constant contact with our dispatch center and while dispatchers did have her hang up and redial 911 several times it was only to try and obtain the best information to begin a search.”
Because the calls were not recognized as 911 calls, the personnel she continued to reach were not equipped to triangulate Yamamoto's whereabouts. A call routed to the proper emergency line can track a person's location by using different cell phone towers in a particular area.
In Yamamoto's case, “the problem was determined to be a translations error in the wireless carrier switch,” according to Sheriff Greg Solano's press release.
“Two sectors on a tower facing Santa Fe were found to be routing to the 10-digit (administration) number of the dispatch center as opposed to the 911 line,” the press release states.
Solano said that another tower facing San Miguel County was experiencing a similar problem the day of Yamamoto's call. However, both that tower as well as the one in Santa Fe were fixed that afternoon.
An audit conducted by the wireless carrier's entire New Mexico system showed that all other towers were routing correctly that day, Solano stated.
Solano said the 911 routing system is “complicated” and “requires the cooperation of numbers entities including, cell phone carriers, cell phone tower owners and operators, the state E911 program operated under the Department of Finance, each individual Dispatch Center, and private companies who are contracted to operate systems used to route calls.”
But Solano said the bottom line is that they have solved the problem and put in measures to try to prevent similar glitches in the system from happening again.
Solano said the problems in communication “did not greatly hamper the quick search and rescue mission and quick recovery of Ms. Yamamoto.” She was found within five hours, Solano said, “which is really good for a search and rescue mission.”
As for operators in the non-emergency dispatch center, Solano said the incident prompted his office to perform “retraining on all the employees and explained to them to keep in mind these people are frustrated, too,” he told the Journal.
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