Officials promised audit of fatal Brookhollow Apartment fire response. Is it happening?

As accusations of a botched emergency response surfaced after 22-year-old Paoly Bedeski died in a northeast Wichita apartment fire, officials vowed to investigate the Oct. 13 blaze.

The county and city agreed to split the costs of an independent audit that would critically examine the public safety agencies involved — Sedgwick County 911 and the Wichita Fire Department — and how Bedeski, the first caller to alert 911 of the fire, died in her bathtub waiting for help to arrive.

The analysis of the Brookhollow Apartment fire was authorized in December with the expectation that it would take several months to select a vendor and several more for a report to be issued. Since then, little has been said about what progress is being made.

The Eagle wanted to determine whether a vendor has been selected to perform the audit and when the public can expect to read the investigative findings.

County chooses Jensen Hughes

With little fanfare, the County Commission approved the board of bids and contracts’ recommendation on May 8 to select Jensen Hughes to conduct the audit. That is the same Baltimore-based public safety consulting firm that issued a blistering report last year on the internal culture of the Wichita Police Department in the aftermath of a racist text message scandal.

Sedgwick County plans to pay the firm $190,000 and bill the city for half of the costs. The contract with Jensen Hughes was finalized on May 31.

The county expects a report to be issued within roughly 90 days, meaning the earliest the audit could be completed is in September. That report must include “a comprehensive review and analysis of Emergency Communications and Fire Department operations, training, policy, procedures, common practices, and actual performance regarding the fatal apartment complex fire incident.”

911 and the fire department are instructed to turn over all documents and data relevant to the Brookhollow Apartment fire response, as are Sedgwick County EMS, Wichita police and the county coroner’s office. Consultants will also have the ability to independently interview all public employees involved in the incident.

Jensen Hughes was selected from a pool of four applicants by a panel that included the city and county’s purchasing directors, Assistant County Manager Rusty Leeds, Assistant City Manager Donte Martin, and representatives from both the Kansas 911 Coordinating Council and Wichita State’s Public Policy and Management Center.

The winning proposal was the most expensive of those submitted — $190,000 compared to $128,000 from FireWise Consulting Limited, $121,965 for Federal Engineering and $107,273 for Mission Critical Partners.

“Basically, this was a proposal instead of a bid. We weren’t looking strictly at who had the best price but the best solution,” County Purchasing Director Joe Thomas said during the May 2 bid board meeting. “When these were reviewed, as we mentioned earlier, Federal Engineering and Jensen Hughes both rose to the top of having what we were looking for, which is complete objective analysis in both operations in emergency communications and the fire department.”

Supporting documents don’t show much about what each firm offered to do differently. Jensen Hughes’ submission does list “computational fire modeling” as a possible service that could be provided at an additional cost. Fire modeling is a mathematical approach to mapping the spread of fires within a building from their point of origin.

“We are only proceeding with the primary scope of services for the amount of $190,000 and have not exercised the option to utilize computational fire modeling,” county spokesperson Nicole Gibbs said.

Fire investigators have still not determined how the blaze began at the Central and Rock apartment complex early on Oct. 13.

Costly miscommunication

Bedeski called 911 at 3:58 a.m. In audio of the harrowing call, she can be heard telling the dispatcher her apartment is on fire and repeating her unit number. “Help me, please,” she pleaded before the line went dead.

Wichita firefighters arrived on the scene 14 seconds after Bedeski’s 911 call ended but they didn’t find her for another 20 minutes. Records show the dispatcher did not tell firefighters a woman was trapped inside Apartment 306 over the radio or through the computer-aided dispatch system.

At a news conference in November, Wichita fire union President Ted Bush said firefighters are trained to conduct third-floor search and rescue operations like the one that could have saved Bedeski in two and a half minutes.

County dispatchers also waited more than 17 minutes to sound the second alarm that firefighters requested within seconds of arriving on the scene. That alarm would have brought more crews and supplies to the scene.

“These failures cost Paoly her life,” the Bedeski family said in a statement that pointed to the slow alarm and failure to notify firefighters that Paoly was trapped.

In a separate news conference, Sedgwick County Emergency Communications Director Elora Forshee said the vital information was lost in communication during the brief 911 call.

“Unfortunately, the information about Miss Bedeski calling from Apartment No. 306 was not intelligibly heard or understood on the phone from the dispatcher. There was not any understanding or assumption that she was trapped.”

The dispatcher did not use the playback function on the computer-aided dispatch system or the cell phone GPS coordinates to determine Bedeski’s location as calls from other Brookhollow Apartment residents began to flood 911, Forshee later confirmed.

She said 911 employees were required to review training materials on how to properly issue a second alarm after the Brookhollow tragedy.

The fire union called for Forshee to be relieved of her duties in the aftermath of the fatal incident, as did 15 former 911 employees who published an open letter alleging inadequate training and a toxic work culture under her leadership.

So far, County Commissioners and the county manager have remained publicly supportive of Forshee. Commissioners approving the audit were adamant that the analysis also thoroughly examine city firefighters’ handling of the incident.

This story was originally published June 3, 2024 at 5:53 AM.