Meanwhile, the alternate route requires passing through five stoplights at five major intersections, instead of just one. Prince Street, the only other cut-through route, is too narrow and convoluted for emergency vehicles to maneuver.
Still, the station's captain, Doug Weidermann, says he doesn't foresee problems unless the vehicles in his district are busy and the responding emergency team is unfamiliar with the area. Nor does the gate worry emergency service providers at the other two stations that serve the neighborhood. They say they're used to obstacles, and besides, 911 gates have long been used in apartment complexes.
In fact, some argue that rather than hurting public safety, the gates improve it. "If you look at the statistics, it is absolutely true that the more high-speed traffic you have on a neighborhood street, the more people will die or be injured," says Dan Jones. "So by attenuating that, we have, by definition, improved somebody's life or extended it."
But no one has ever died because of people speeding through Timbergrove. On the other hand, Timothy Walters came close that day in March 1995, allegedly because of the ambulance delay at the gate. Blaming the delay for his condition is too black and white for Jones, though. "If you're drawing a direct line of causality between the delay and the medical effects on the individual, whose testimony is it that the line is there? Is it his doctor's testimony?" he wants to know. "Is it just obvious that had it been there three minutes, five minutes faster, his brain would not be like that?"
It is to Cynthia Walters. The drugs her husband needed to keep his heart pumping were on the ambulance, she says, along with the paramedic who was licensed to administer them. "[Tim] was clinically dead when he got in the ambulance and DOA when we got to the hospital," she remembers, her voice taking on a bitter edge. "That's when [the doctor] came in and told me that he got a blood pressure and a slight pulse. And I knew that wasn't good."
While Tim was still in the hospital, Cynthia returned to work at the city secretary's office, where she had worked for 13 years. "I didn't ever file a lawsuit against the city, either.... It was only because of my loyalty that I didn't do it," she says, drawing out the word "loyalty." "Just a dedicated city employee, that's what I was, and I could kick myself in the butt for it now. I can't even stand to see Lanier on TV."
Before Tim's heart attack, Walters's devotion meant that she didn't get involved when her neighbors came to City Hall to protest the proposed gate on Dian Street. Instead, she answered their phone calls, put them on the speaker's list and handed it out to City Council. Only three days before Tim's heart attack, the Committee to Keep Dian Open had spoken before City Council.
Walters lingers a moment over this last bit of irony, then moves on to discuss another Committee appearance before City Council. In October 1995, she was there with her husband, and she delivered a speech. "A speakers meeting," she remembers, "the first time I'd been up there, and they all know me, the Mayor and Dan Jones and Anna [Russell, city secretary]. And I said, you might think the worst thing didn't happen because he didn't die, but it did. The worst did happen to me.
