Committee to investigate emergency dispatch errors
Technology snafus scramble which companies should be first on the scene
Public safety o cials have convened a committee that will meet for the rst time tonight (Thursday) to investigate a serious error discovered in the county’s emergency 9-1-1 dispatch system last week.
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Todd Brown, chief of Chester Gap Volunteer Fire & Rescue, noticed something was o . By mid-week, the Chair of the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors had written a memorandum to Sheri Connie Compton that began: “Sheri Compton, I need your help.”
Chief Brown said that last week he realized his company was not being dispatched to emergency calls in areas where they’re usually the first or second to respond. He contacted Chief Dispatcher Janie Jenkins, who informed him that her dispatchers had “just realized some of the run areas were all messed up also.”
Generally speaking, a fire company is “first due” within the area where it is the closest responder. When a fire company is first due, it means that company is the first to be notified by the 9-1-1 dispatcher that there’s an emergency. If the first due fire company does not respond to dispatch within five minutes, a second company is called, and the second company is called “second due.” The third is called “third due” and so on.
“What had happened was our first due ended up getting smaller and then our second due went from Huntly Road down to Wakefield School,” Brown explained. “And then from Wakefield School all back up in the area of Dearing Road and [Bean Hollow], we went from second due to last due.
So if there would have been an EMS call or a fire call or something at Settle’s, just to give you an example, [dispatch] would have called everyone in the county before they called Chester Gap. So that was a big mistake.”
In her memorandum to the Sheriff, Supervisor Debbie Donehey wrote: “As another example, a call from Grimsley Road has Chester Gap toned out Fourth Due, which also does not add up, particularly given the current Sixth Due arrangement for Flint Hill-origin calls. To put this in perspective, a call from Grimsley Road would require Chester Gap personnel to travel through their Sixth Due area to arrive at Grimsley Road to meet their Fourth Due obligation there.”
On the morning of March 2, the Sheriff told the Rappahannock News that Chester Gap’s department is now being dispatched on any calls north of Massie’s Corner. She said it was the mapping system, not the computer-automated dispatching system, that had somehow changed Chester Gap’s dues.
“Right now it’s just looking at everything and trying to get everything fixed,” Sheriff Compton said. “We refer to the map but the dispatchers also have a book that they’re looking in to make sure that the proper people are dispatched.”
Chester Gap is currently the only company in the county to have fulltime paid emergency responders on staff and is thus uniquely capable of providing fast round-the-clock response. In an interview last month, Brown told the Rappahannock News that his fire and rescue personnel typically respond within three minutes of receiving a tone from dispatch.
Asked how long he believes the error to have persisted, Chief Brown said it couldn't have been more than 30 days. “We just don’t know if it was a miscommunication somewhere or if it was misinformation inputted, we don’t know. That’s the task of this committee, is to find out, okay, how did this happen?” he said.
The committee, composed of Washington firefighter Sean Knick, Chief Dispatcher Lt. Janie Jenkins, Sheriff Compton, Dispatcher Sandy Carter, Chief Brown and county resident Page Glennie will meet at 5 p.m. at the Washington Fire Company on Thursday, March 4.
“We need to go through this and find out how this happened, number one, and where this mistake came from. Then number two is to fix this mistake so it doesn’t happen again because something like this is putting people’s lives at risk,” Brown said.
“Time is of the essence — if someone is having a heart attack and has to wait 15 minutes before somebody responds when you’ve got somebody that’s closer, that is a big issue. We need to make sure this is corrected properly … it should have never happened.”
“Hopefully the message to the citizens is as soon as we recognized there was a problem, there was immediate action by public safety and immediate action by me to make sure we fix any problem that’s out there as quick as possible because we don’t want the citizens concerned that they can’t trust when they call 9-1-1 that someone will show up,” Donehey said.
Sheriff Compton: “Right now it’s just looking at everything and trying to get everything fixed.”