911 Mix-Up Delays Response
COFFEEVILLE – County officials reviewed the response to a 911 call following an incident Friday when a District 5 county road department employee was injured after falling from a backhoe bucket that was extended an estimated 10 feet in the air. The worker had been trimming limbs along a county road.
The worker fell from the bucket and suffered a cracked vertebra, according to District 5 Supervisor Gaylon Gray. “He fell 10 or 12 feet,” Gray said, adding that the accident happened around 11:50 a.m. near Scobey.
During Monday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Emergency Management Director Stewart Spence and Deputy Director Jarred Logan explained that a recording of the 911 calls will help clarify confusion over the response.
“When they first called, apparently it went to Tallahatchie County,” Spence said about the initial 911 call requesting an ambulance. He added that emergency officials in Tallahatchie County contacted Yalobusha dispatchers at 12:01 p.m. The Yalobusha dispatcher struggled to determine the location of the accident to send an ambulance.
Spence said the dispatcher instructed the caller to hang up and dial 911 again so the system could ping the phone and determine the precise location. “He never called back,” Spence said.
“It was an hour and 20 minutes before an ambulance got over there. We were afraid to move him,” Gray also told the board.
Gray said the ambulance was not dispatched after the first 911 call because the location could not be confirmed. “They gave them County Road 5 and told them they would have a guy sitting at the Scobey Post Office on Highway 51, and he would take them to the accident scene,” Gray said.
A second call for help was made about 40 minutes later, and only then was the ambulance dispatched. “The first call never got to the ambulance,” Gray said. “It wasn’t the ambulance — the dispatch did not relay the call.”
Gray said another county employee arrived on the scene and called his mother in Coffeeville to check on the situation. “She looked and saw that the ambulance was still here in Coffeeville at 12:25, so she called 911.
The ambulance was dispatched and arrived at the scene around 1:15.
Gray added that the road crew may have panicked after the fall and didn’t know what to do.
“Our dispatchers have to help do the thinking when people are panicking,” he said.
Other activity in Monday’s meeting included approving a payment of $25,333.60 for the county’s match to purchase a new 17 passenger bus. The bus serves elderly residents, providing transportation as part of North Central Planning and Development District’s Area Agency on Aging. The current bus used in Water Valley will be used in Oakland.
