Child blamed for house fire; 911 still being scrutinized

By Elisa Glushefski

Published: May 30, 2008

A child used a lighter to start three fires at 4512 Kingston Road in Dale City, according to an investigation by the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue.

The department is continuing to investigate problems with the county's emergency communications system that may have caused at least one 911 call to go unanswered for several minutes.

"We view this very seriously," Fire and Rescue Chief Kevin McGee said Friday. "We view our 911 system as a mission critical public safety system. Our expectation is for 100 percent reliability and so we're looking at this in a way that we want to prevent any situation like this from ever occurring again."

Officials said Friday that investigators concluded that the juvenile resident of the Kingston Road house set the three fires in an upstairs bedroom in less than a two-week period.

The case has been turned over the child protective services for further review.

A fire was reported at the address around 6 p.m. May 20.

Another fire that was set Monday was extinguished by someone at the house and was not reported to the fire de-partment, officials said.

The blaze Wednesday, which also started around 6 p.m., took about 20 minutes to knock down and caused severe burn damage to the second floor and roof, along with smoke and water damage throughout the house. No one was injured in any of the fires.

Still in question is whether problems the communications center was experiencing following scheduled maintenance led to a delay in the fire units' response.

Kingston Road resident Jennifer Meyer said she called 911 to report the fire, but was on the line for five minutes before her call was connected to a dispatcher.

According to McGee, around the same time the fire started, Verizon workers switched back from a backup system to the primary 911 system after replacing a switch.

During that switch, McGee said some 911 calls were routed to and became stuck in a queue, while others were diverted to the backup system.

Verizon is investigating what happened with the equipment at the time the system problems occurred, McGee said.

The fire department, he said, is reviewing what was done by the communications staff and is also trying to deter-mine who else might have placed 911 calls at the time, what calls went through and what ones were delayed.

McGee said they are also trying to determine whether the system problems caused a delay in dispatching fire units.

No other known emergencies were reported during the time in which the problems occurred, McGee said, and tech-nicians with Verizon and the county were able to get the system working again.

Appointed to lead the investigation into problems that arose at the county's public safety communications center—jointly managed by the Prince William County Police Department and the fire department—is safety communications director Capt. Ted McInteer.

The report will be public once it is forwarded to the county executive and to the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, McGee said.

Another switch is scheduled to be replaced next Wednesday, McGee said, but he and Police Chief Charlie T. Deane want make sure there's a detailed plan in place ahead of time and assurances that the switch will not interfere with 911 calls.

"If we're not satisfied that the system is going to be fully functional, then we won't sign off and the repair won't be done until we're satisfied," McGee said.

Staff writer Elisa Glushefski can be reached at 703-878-8062.