Brownout may have had role in tot's death

Closest paramedics were on another call

By Debbi Baker , UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Karen Kucher , UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Hieu Tran Phan , UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Originally published July 21, 2010 at 11:29 a.m., updated July 21, 2010 at 10:38 p.m.

SAN DIEGO — San Diego fire officials said Wednesday that their department’s cost-cutting “brownouts,” which idle equipment, may have contributed to the choking death of a toddler in Mira Mesa.

Bentley Do, 2, died at about 9:40 p.m. Tuesday after choking on the first gum ball he ever tasted, his family said. Authorities said police officers arrived roughly five minutes after the 911 call, and that firefighters and an ambulance reached the home some 4½ minutes afterward.

The national standard response time for firefighters is within five minutes, 90 percent of the time.

“Brownouts had a negative impact on our ability to provide service in this case. What I cannot say is whether we could have been able to save Bentley’s life had we been there sooner,” said Javier Mainar, chief of the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

Paramedics have specialized medical training and carry equipment — such as forceps — that could be used to try to grab an item lodged in a child’s throat, said fire department spokesman Maurice Luque.

Bentley’s relatives are struggling to understand the delayed action.

“The dispatcher told us to please wait, to stand by,” said Du Le, one of Bentley’s cousins. “We kept looking at the fire station across the street from our house and asking why nobody could come.”

That was Station 38, about a block away from the family’s home on New Salem Street. At the time, its crew was responding to a trauma call in another part of Mira Mesa in Station 44’s district, Mainar said.

The engine at Station 44 was out of service because of the brownout and its truck crew, which doubles as a hazardous materials team, had been called to an emergency in the South County neighborhood of Nestor, where abandoned waste had been found, the chief said.

Bentley’s family disputes the authorities’ time logs. Le estimates that officers showed up 10 minutes after the 911 call, and that fire officials followed five minutes later.

“We think the crews tried their best,” Le said, “but we still wonder if they could have been here sooner to save little Bentley.”

The boy was the oldest child of Nam Do and Mien Nguyen. The couple had married after meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where Do works as an architect for a U.S.-based company.

Nguyen eventually immigrated to the United States and gave birth to Bentley in April 2008. She is now six months pregnant with the couple’s second child.

The family was eating dinner Tuesday when Bentley opened a kitchen cabinet and took a thumb-sized gum ball. His grandfather had bought the candy for the household’s older children.

“Nobody had any idea that Bentley got the gum until he ran to us, pointing to his throat to show that he was choking,” Le said.

The adults tried to dislodge the gum ball with their fingers. They hit the boy’s back repeatedly. They ran to a neighbor, a nurse, to plead for assistance. They tried to do CPR on Bentley as the 911 dispatcher instructed.

“Nothing was working,” Le said. “He was convulsing. Blood was coming out of his nose and ears.”

When two police officers arrived, they administered CPR and chest compressions, Mainar said. By the time firefighters and an ambulance crew came, Bentley had turned blue and stopped moving.

Le said Bentley and his mother were supposed to leave Wednesday for Vietnam to visit Do. The family had planned a send-off party for that morning, which instead became a gathering of mourners waiting for autopsy results from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Do is expected to reach San Diego today after rushing to take a flight home. His family hasn’t told him that Bentley died; he thinks his son is still in the hospital emergency room.

“We are too afraid to give him the truth. He might kill or injure himself in distress,” Le said.

Mainar said his department’s goal is to respond to an emergency within the national standard. The city’s current track record is about 54 percent, he said.

“We fell well short of that in this case,” Mainar said.

The brownout plan, which began Feb. 6, calls for as many as eight of the city’s 47 fire engines to be idle at designated stations, which saves an estimated $11.5 million annually in overtime expenses.

Firefighters from those stations fill in for colleagues who are sick, injured or on vacation. The cost-cutting measure helped close a $179 million budget gap.

In April, Mainar warned city officials that the plan was increasing the risk of death, injury and property loss due to lengthened response times.

Frank DeClercq, president of the San Diego City Fire Fighters Local 145, said he hopes the incident will prompt citizens to tell city officials that public safety is a priority.

“As firefighters we want to help people when they need us, to the best of our ability,” he said. “To know it took 9½ minutes there, it is gut-wrenching in my heart.”

Mainar said the brownout plan is scheduled to be discussed at the City Council’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee meeting next week.

Councilwoman Marti Emerald, the committee’s chairwoman, has tried unsuccessfully to restore cuts in the fire department’s budget. She issued a statement Wednesday offering condolences for Bentley’s death and pledging to “continue efforts to restore funding for our fire and rescue services.”

“The death of this young boy is a devastating loss for his family and community,” Emerald said.

Councilman Carl DeMaio, who represents Mira Mesa, also issued a statement offering sympathy. “Our focus should be on meeting the needs of the family — supporting them and comforting them,” he said.