More than two years after a prominent D.C. journalist was left on an upper Northwest sidewalk to die, the District’s emergency rescue team remains woefully unprepared to deal with citizens’ emergencies, an internal review has found. The D.C. inspector general reported in a recent audit, obtained by The Examiner, that the D.C. Fire and Emergency Management System, the city’s main rescue service: » Hasn’t established anything like a quality “medical assurance” program to protect the health and welfare of District citizens; » Still suffers from “excessive turnover in key management positions”; » And still doesn’t have enough staffers to coordinate rescue services for the city’s some 600,000 some citizens. David Rosenbaum, a New York Times veteran, died after being mugged near his upper Northwest home in early 2007. He was left on a neighborhood sidewalk for several critical minutes because responding firefighters thought he was drunk, and then, when an ambulance finally came, he was driven all the way across town — despite being closer to other emergency rooms — because one of his paramedics wanted to run a personal errand. Rosenbaum’s children sued the city for more than $20 million, but agreed to settle their claims as long as Mayor Adrian Fenty fixed the city’s ambulance service. The Sept. 15 audit suggests that the city still has a long way to go before it can protect District residents properly. Fire and EMS spokesman Pete Piringer couldn’t be reached for comment. But the department’s responses, included in the audit, show that agency officials largely agree with auditors’ findings and are promising to get them fixed. Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, said the inspector general’s audit raised disturbing questions about the status of the city’s emergency response teams. “It looks to me that there are still too many problems that haven’t been resolved after three years,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of this. The bottom line is that progress since the Rosenbaum tragedy has been stalled.”
