{"id":274964,"date":"2013-08-28T09:35:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T14:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?p=274964"},"modified":"2013-08-29T11:04:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T16:04:50","slug":"fire-department-criticized-for-response-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=274964","title":{"rendered":"Fire Department Criticized for Response Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/?attachment_id=274965\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-274965\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2013\/08\/whitehouse_fire_update-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"whitehouse_fire_update\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-274965\" \/><\/a>WHITEHOUSE&#8211; The Whitehouse municipal fire department is under &#8216;fire&#8217; for a delayed response time when called to 207 Senter Avenue on Sunday, August 18th. Fire officials tell KETK, the blaze started around 1:00 a.m., that night, the homeowners were able to make it out on time, however their house was a total loss.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Neighbor, Bill Mclean, lives directly next door to the now burned down home, and he says after numerous calls to 911 by he and his fellow neighbors, crews took too long to get there, Mclean says, &#8220;I ended up calling the fire department one more time myself, and then it was about 20 minutes later when we finally got somebody here.&#8221; According the the official time records, the call took 18 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>However, the distance from the fire station to the blazing house on Senter is 0.4 miles, not even a half a mile away. Residents in the area were confused by the delayed response time since the station is so close. According to the interim administrative assistant for the Whitehouse Fire Department, Michael Frost, brought in from the Tyler Fire Department, there was some miscommunication with Smith County dispatch.<\/p>\n<p>Frost was called in by Whitehouse City Manager, Kevin Huckabee, to sort out the problems and review the protocols at the Whitehouse Fire Department. Frost says on the night of the August 18th, paid firemen from Whitehouse were out on a call assisting the Flint\/Gresham Fire Department on a multiple vehicle fatal accident. While the paid firemen were out on the call, Frost says, Smith County dispatch was supposed to send out a &#8220;box call&#8221; to area volunteer firefighters to man the station.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a miscommunication though the dispatch system and they weren&#8217;t paged immediately,&#8221; said Frost. &#8220;So crews responded from Flint instead of the Whitehouse fire station, which caused the time delay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mclean also tells KETK, as he was witnessing crews arrive, the firemen encountered another problem, Mclean says. The hydrant down at the end of the street didn&#8217;t work, so they had to go to the next hydrant. Frost is also looking into the problem regarding the non-working hydrant, Frost says, &#8220;that hydrant was written up, and had been turned in by email (to the Water Works Company) and somewhere in there it hadn&#8217;t been repaired.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WHITEHOUSE&#8211; The Whitehouse municipal fire department is under &#8216;fire&#8217; for a delayed response time when called to 207 Senter Avenue on Sunday, August 18th. Fire officials tell KETK, the blaze started around 1:00 a.m., that night, the homeowners were able to make it out on time, however their house was a total loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-08 10:00:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":274967,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274964\/revisions\/274967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}