Waukesha police and fire departments are investigating a malfunction in their 911 dispatch software that left people waiting for firefighters to arrive at a fatal apartment fire until dispatchers manually overrode the software and called out firefighters.
Two people, a husband and wife, died in the fire in the early Tuesday morning. Callers reported the fire at Lambeth Road and Oakdale Drive to dispatchers at 1:25 a.m., WISN reports. But police say the computer aided dispatch program malfunctioned and did not automatically notify the fire department of the call as its designed to do.
Instead, police officers responded to the call alone. Once on the scene, police officers initiated calls to the dispatch center, which discovered the fire department had not been called out. At 1:30 a.m. dispatchers manually initiated the call to the fire department.
Two people, Kevin and Kim McQuade, died from injuries sustained in the fire. Others were injured jumping from the building.
ProPhoenix Corp., which produces the software, has not issued a statement on this story as of Thursday morning. We will update when it does.