{"id":901,"date":"2019-07-16T17:44:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T17:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=901"},"modified":"2019-07-16T17:44:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T17:44:14","slug":"polk-commissioners-approve-200k-settlement-for-the-family-of-lakeland-woman-who-died-in-2018-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/07\/16\/polk-commissioners-approve-200k-settlement-for-the-family-of-lakeland-woman-who-died-in-2018-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk Commissioners approve $200K settlement for the family of Lakeland woman who died in 2018 fire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/loretta_pickard_46jpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-902\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/loretta_pickard_46jpg.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/loretta_pickard_46jpg-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/loretta_pickard_46jpg-768x432.jpg 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Polk County Commissioners have unanimously approved a\n$200,000 settlement offered to Loretta Pickards family estate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She was on the phone with 911 while her home was on fire but\nresponding firefighters never went inside to rescue her. Polk County Fire\nRescue officials originally said it was too dangerous for firefighters to enter\nthe burning house.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, a later report blamed a lack of communication\nbetween dispatch and firefighters.&nbsp;The 242-page independent report also\npointed at other mistakes in the agency&#8217;s response.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It was never made clear to firefighters that\nPickard, who was on the phone with 911, was the same person who was in the\nhouse. The report says that was due to lack of communication \u2014 the computer\nthat firefighters use that had information about the victim&#8217;s location and\ncondition was down that night, and that information was also never said over\nradios, either.<\/li><li>Firefighters did not have life-saving equipment\nfor search-and-rescue with them, and had \u201ctunnel vision\u201d to just focus on\ngetting the fire out rather than make a rescue.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Dispatch-report.pdf\">Death\nInvestigation Report<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The niece of Lorretta Pickard, 76, said her family decided\nto pursue a lawsuit because they want to make sure this never happens\nagain.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Attorney Chris Borzell filed the notice of intent to\ninitiate litigation on March 29, on behalf of James Arthur Pickard, Loretta\u2019s\nhusband, and their two children, Sharon Rose Bush, and James Leroy\nPickard.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Polk County Commissioners have unanimously approved a $200,000 settlement offered to Loretta Pickards family estate.&nbsp; She was on the phone with 911 while her home was on fire but responding&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}