Emergency calls fail Saturday when daughter tries to get help for injured mother

Nina Jarrett on Saturday was walking from the kitchen to the dining room when she fell. The 87 year-old, who suffers from Parkinson's disease and osteoporosis, fractured her pelvis and suffered severe pain in her right arm.

Catherine Jarrett, her daughter, called 911. She got a recorded message saying the number was disconnected. She dialed again. Same message. Again. Same recording.

Catherine never got through to a Fort Scott Police dispatcher.

"What's going on?" Catherine said she thought. Nina and Catherine, who are from Arkansas, were visiting Sydney Coon, a Bronson resident who is Catherine's uncle and Nina's brother.

She then called the Kansas Highway Patrol office in Chanute in Allen County. It rang five times and then went to a busy signal. They called the Bourbon County's Sheriff's Office. It rang five times. The same thing happened after the rings: a busy signal.

Catherine next called Mercy Health Center. Again, five rings and a busy signal.

She called the operator at Craw-Kan, their telephone service provider. Finally, she connected with a human voice. However, the operator put her on hold four times. The operator told her Craw-Kan couldn't connect her to any emergency service.

"My mother laid there on that floor for 45 minutes," she said.

Finally, she called the Bronson Fire Department. Firefighters responded in a matter of minutes. Firefighters contacted Mercy. By the time emergency technicians arrived at the scene in an ambulance to transport Nina, another 20 minutes had passed.

That means more an hour had passed from the time Nina fell to when she arrived at the hospital.

Craw-Kan sent out a technician on Monday, who told Coon he needed a new telephone, Catherine said. But when the tech tested the questionable phone by dialing 911, the call went right through.

Craig Wilbert, assistant manager for Craw-Kan, based in Girard, confirmed that the company sent a technician to the house to check on the problem.

There was nothing wrong with the phone line or the 911 system, Wilbert said. The 911 system was up and running at time of the call, he added.

"It worked -- 911 worked. Long-distance calling worked," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, this type of instance looks like a telephone problem."

He's at a loss for why the telephone worked for the technician when he dialed 911 on Monday but not for Jarrett two days prior. "This was an isolated incident," he said.

"This is scary as hell," Coon said. "You could be laying there dying and trying to get through to 911 or anybody."