The death of a woman who drowned in her car as Fort Smith police worked to extricate her from flash flooding Saturday sparked an internal investigation into the way a dispatcher spoke to her in the moments before she died.
The city of Fort Smith received 4.04 inches of rain Saturday morning, causing a flash flood that washed 47-year-old Debra Stevens’ vehicle off of a roadway and into a grove of trees. A 911 call released Thursday morning showed that Stevens was on the phone with 911 dispatcher Donna Reneau for more than 20 minutes as the water crept into and over the vehicle.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette will not publish the recording released to media, as the 911 call contains graphic and disturbing content.
“I understand that listening to a person going through the panic that Mrs. Stevens was in the final moments of her life, we would all hope that we would get a better response than what she was given,” Fort Smith Interim Police Chief Danny Baker said Thursday. “But also know that we were working diligently to get to her. The men and women involved in that incident, this will be something they have to deal with for the rest of their lives.”
There have been 80 flood-related deaths in the United States in 2019, seven of which occurred in Arkansas, according to the National Weather Service. Stevens is the only person who has died as a result of flooding in August.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the Fort Smith dispatcher's name. The dispatcher was Donna Reneau.