Fire victims frustrated by slow emergency response

By Elisa Glushefski

Published: May 29, 2008

Jennifer Meyer describes standing on her front lawn Wednesday night and watching the blaze grow larger at the house across the street. She had dialed Prince William County's 911 emergency center and was helpless as she listened to the unanswered ringing.

When units from the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue arrived at the burning house at 4512 Kingston Road in Dale City, flames had engulfed the roof and black smoke billowed into the sky, Meyer said.

After dialing 911, Meyer said a recorded message played and then the line rang for five minutes before she heard a voice on the other end.

In the end, the house sustained significant fire damage to the roof and second floor, in addition to water and smoke damage to the rest of the house.

On Thursday morning, Meyer sent an e-mail to the offices of Prince William Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart and to Supervisor John D. Jenkins asking for an explanation of why the line rang for five minutes before it was picked up by a 911 dispatcher.

"I am extremely upset to learn of this and have asked the county executive to conduct an investigation and report back to the BOCS," Jenkins, who is out of town this week, stated in an e-mail Thursday after-noon.

An official with the Prince William County Department of Fire and Rescue said Thursday that the communications center handled the call correctly and that the county has requested Verizon investigate the matter.

"What happened between when they called and when it came to [the communications center] is not within our realm," said Assistant Chief Brett Bowman.

Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell said the company is investigating how much time elapsed between when Meyer called and when the communications center received the call, but said he is "not in the position to go into what we've found."

According to Fire and Rescue, the communications center's main call system underwent scheduled mainte-nance Wednesday and was switched to a backup system during that time.

The main system was back up and running once Verizon workers were finished, but several problems arose during the day and calls had to be transferred to the backup system, a spokesman for the fire department said Wednes-day.

And that's what might have delayed Meyer's call, he said.

Fire and rescue received several calls reporting the fire, Bowman said. One call that came in at 5:58 p.m. was a hang-up and appears to have come from the house that was on fire, he said, and another was received less than a minute later.

Units were dispatched and arrived at the scene less than 3 1/2 minutes later, Bowman said.

No one was injured in the fire that took about 20 minutes to extinguish. The cause and origin are still under investi-gation.

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