An “error” reportedly caused by Sampson County Emergency Services delayed fire crews from arriving at an active fire scene recently, leaving Taylors Bridge Fire Chief Alan Williams frustrated because he says the issue is an ongoing one.

The call from the communication center about a house fire at 215 Hall Farm Lane reached the Taylors Bridge Fire Department Monday, leading their team to respond to the call. Assisting on the call was supposed to be members of the Herring, Halls and Newton Grove fire departments. That, however, is where the issue begins, something, Williams said, had him beyond frustrated.

He was so concerned, Williams called the Independent to detail what he said was a serious problem.

”There was a fire yesterday (Monday) on 215 Hall Farm Lane, and there was an error at the communication center. Their own departments were dispatched to the wrong address. That caused a huge issue and delayed response to the actual fire,” the fire chief said.

While there was a delay, Williams said that putting out the fire wasn’t a concern, and crews were able to clear it without any problems.

“When we got on scene, the house was full of smoke and there was fire in the kitchen area at the rear of the home,” he explained. “We made entry and extinguished the fire fairly rapidly. But the whole issue with the fire situation was our delayed response because of the error made at the communication center.”

Williams said that error sent the supporting fire departments to a different location where there was no fire, and that delayed the response time to the scene by 20 minutes. Those are errors, he noted, that shouldn’t keep happening as protocols are in place to help prevent them.

“So when the original call was dispatched, they sent the wrong departments to the wrong address,” he asserted. “They sent Herring, Halls and Newton Grove to a location somewhere off Keener Road, but there’s protocols in place so that mistake doesn’t happen. Especially in today’s world, with technology, cell phones and cell phone towers, when a 911 call comes in, they can get the location pretty close. Even if the person just hangs up, they know the geographic area of where it came from so they should‘ve known the fire location was at Butler’s Crossroads and not Keener … that’s where the failure occurred.

“When that happens you’re putting departments out there on the road, and they think they’re going to a fire, just to find out there’s no fire there. This has happened several times in the past, even with the protocols in place up there. Things like this shouldn’t happen. But if the person there taking the calls doesn’t follow the protocols, then we get delayed response times to incidents.”

Williams said he’s reached out multiple times to the communication center to discover why this situation continues to happen. He noted his efforts have turned up nothing and his frustration is now pointed at leadership.

“They have not given us the reasons why it keeps happening,” Williams said. “I spoke with the communications director, Cliff Brown, and he said it was a failure of protocols, but there’s been no further details. So, after that, I asked for the Emergency Services director, Rick Sauer, because in the last couple of weeks, we’ve had several incidents where there’s been communication errors that’ve impacted us responding to the scenes needed.

“So when I ask Rick, the only response I ever get from him is, ‘we’ll look into it.’ so I blame it on the leadership at Sampson County Emergency Services and Rick Sauer. It’s his department, he’s in charge and I have repeatedly asked but we can’t get an answer out of him.”

That problem has Williams so agitated he’s reached out to members of the Sampson County Board of Commissioners in hopes of finding the cause, and a solution.

”It’s just the failures and the leadership up there that leads to problems like this,” Williams asserted. “It’s not fair to the homeowners or whoever calls 911 that’s having an emergency that needs help to then have that help delayed because of these ongoing errors. We’re volunteering because we want to provide that help, but they’ve got to get us there. So now I’ve asked the commissioners to look into it up there and at the leadership to see if we can fix the problem.”

Calls to Sauer went unanswered by press time.

Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.