911 Operator Sends FDNY To Fix Woman's "Broken Water"

When firefighters arrived at an apartment on 138th Street on Aug. 18, they were expecting to find a broken water pipe — not a pregnant woman whose water had just broken. In a 911 dispatching gaffe, an operator classified a call about a woman going into labor as a water leak and sent out Ladder Co. 28 "armed with hooks, wrenches and flashlights but no medical gear," the Post reports.

"I called 911 and said, 'My wife, she is pregnant. Her water has broken,'" said husband Mahamadou Sylla, 36. When the firefighters arrived just after 9 am, Sylla brought them to his wife, Amina Morou, who was in the bathroom. "They were very surprised. They said, 'What do you mean she's pregnant? Where's the leak?'"

The firefighters called an ambulance and Amina gave birth to daughter Koudjedji less than an hour later at Harlem Hospital. News of the dispatching mistake comes just a week after 911 operators sent firefighters to the wrong address in Queens, delaying response times to a fatal Woodside house fire by about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.