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A woman grieving the death of her husband who recently suffered a heart attack is sharing her "nightmare" experience calling 9-1-1.
Tanya Gotcher is featured in a campaign ad for Travis County Judge candidate Rupal Chaudhari, according to CBS Austin. In the ad, Gotcher said she was on hold with 9-1-1 for over 15 minutes while her husband was having a heart attack. He died while waiting for the ambulance to arrive at their house.
"It took 15 minutes for 9-1-1 to answer my call. I had found my husband, Cassy, collapsed from a fatal heart attack," Gotcher said in the ad. about the incident from May. At the time, Gotcher said she went to neighbors for help and even considered running to a nearby fire station, but didn't want to leave her husband alone. She was performing CPR on her husband when she realized nobody on the other end of the phone was attending to her call. "The phone just ringing, and ringing, and ringing," she said.
Becoming desperate, Gotcher called her father-in-law to also try his luck with 9-1-1. "It took him 10 minutes and then the 9-1-1 company realized he was in a different county so they transferred him and it took another three minutes. Mine was a minimum of 15, if not 20 minutes," she said.
Chaudhari, Gotcher's neighbor, said she's working with local leaders to help solve the dispatcher problems plaguing Travis County. The Austin Police Department told the news outlet that where the 9-1-1 call goes is dependent on where the caller lives. Some calls, for example, will be routed to the county, the Travis County Sheriff's Office or the Austin Police Department. "It’s a serious problem. We cannot solve this overnight, let’s start with that. We need to maintain, retain, and attract new hires," Chaudhari said. "It impacts all of Travis County as well and this is where I think leadership needs to step in and fix this issue." Chaudhari's opponent, Andy Brown's office, told the news outlet that the local dispatch is almost at full staff.
If a similar situation happens to you, officials recommend you don't hang up to keep your place in the call queue.
"When you hear the phone ring for 15 minutes and you can't get to anybody to help you is the worst nightmare that you could have," Gotcher said.