911 center errors botch EMS response to Sampson Co. accidents: 'Mistakes like this shouldn't happen'

SAMPSON COUNTY, N.C. (WTVD) -- A Sampson County fire chief is speaking out after he says mistakes from the county's 911 call center are sending crews to the wrong locations.

One couple said their kitchen burned down after the county's 911 call center sent the wrong fire department to the wrong address.

"The structure fire on Hall Farm, they dispatched Halls, Newton Grove, Herring, and Vann Crossroads to the wrong address and it was clearly--he called in on a cellphone and it pinged right there, close to his house," said Chief Alan Williams of the Taylors Bridge Fire Department.

That wrong address was almost 30 minutes away. By the time the correct fire department--Taylors Bridge--got there, the burned-down house was uninhabitable.

Williams estimated that there is about $250,000 worth of damage.

"We've got some of the best dispatchers in the state of North Carolina that work up there. They're in an $18 million building. They've got state-of-the-art technology. Twenty-five years ago we were running around looking at mapbooks and rural paved roads trying to find out where we were at. But today with all of the technology and the protocols in place, mistakes like this shouldn't happen."

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Williams said Sampson County's 911 call center has made multiple mistakes in recent weeks. In another incident, he said a dispatcher misreported the severity of a deadly car wreck. The dispatcher then failed to send the ambulances firefighters had requested in real time.

Williams is calling on the county commissioners to remove the emergency services director from his role. The director admits to dispatching mistakes in both the house fire and the deadly wreck and said a remedial plan is in place.

"But we need staffing," said Rick Sauer, the director of the Sampson County Emergency Services. "And right now when you look at the county, Sampson County, we're the lowest paid for dispatchers in the nine-county region. So that hurts us a little bit in recruitment and retention. The employees that we have are very good at what they do. Again, they're young, they're going to make mistakes, but we need to attract more people."

ABC11 reached out to the chairman of the Sampson County Board of Commissioners Jerol Kivett. Kivett has not responded at the time of reporting.