Luzerne County Seeks Dismissal in 911 Dispatcher's Fatal Error

Luzerne County is seeking to have the lawsuit filed over a dispatching error in a fatal Mocanaqua fire thrown out, saying there was no apparent reason the woman killed couldn’t have left the burning building when a dispatcher ordered an evacuation.

Michelle Dzoch, 52, died in the May 15 fire at 76 Main St. in the Mocanaqua section of Conyngham Township after 911 dispatchers sent emergency crews to a location 15 miles away — an address fire crews later determined didn’t exist. Her family filed a complaint in November alleging a call taker should have known Mocanaqua was in Conyngham Township, not in the borough of Conyngham.

The error caused an eight-minute delay that resulted in firefighters reaching the scene too late, the lawsuit alleges.

But the county on Tuesday filed a brief seeking to have the suit dismissed, saying Dzoch herself apparently failed to heed a dispatcher’s warning.

“There appears to have been nothing preventing the decedent, with or without the aid of her daughter, to save herself,” attorney David Heisler wrote in the brief.

The brief says Dzoch’s daughter called 911 at her mother’s request and in her presence to report the fire that had started in her boys’ bedroom. At the time, the daughter was trying to put it out.

That indicates the fire at that point was contained to a single room and was small enough that Dzoch’s daughter thought she could douse it with water, Heisler wrote. When a dispatcher instructed her to get everyone out, the daughter called out, “Everybody out of the house,” the brief says.

Despite that, dispatchers later heard that one person, Dzoch, remained inside the house while everyone else evacuated it.

“No explanation is provided as to why everyone except the decedent was able to safely exit the building,” Heisler wrote. “The plaintiff, in the instant case, has failed to set forth a claim for state-created danger liability upon which relief may be granted.”

The brief also says a county and its agencies cannot be sued “merely because it employed a wrongdoer.” The county would have to prove that the call taker “intentionally misdirected the fire fighting units,” he wrote.

“That extremely harsh and serious allegation has not been made,” Heisler wrote.

Two 911 employees were suspended without pay for the incorrect dispatch. One of them, Debra Pac, was fired in June.

Investigators determined the fatal fire began with Dzoch’s two grandchildren playing with a lighter in a bedroom. Firefighters found Dzoch’s body in a second-floor room after the fire was extinguished. The coroner’s office ruled her death accidental.

Luzerne County Coroner Bill Lisman has said determining Dzoch’s exact time of death is “an impossibility” and that there is no way to know if the delay in dispatching the closer fire department played a role in her death.

570-821-2058, @cvjimhalpin

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