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9-1-1 gets busy signal
Family learns, too late, of Verizon's trouble with connections in Millboro
 | | The late Donnie Bryan (foreground) as he enjoyed a happy family moment with wife Gloria and daughter Heather (left). (Photo courtesy Rhonda Kennedy) |
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MILLBORO - Sometime before 5 a.m. on Thursday morning, April 3, Gloria Bryan woke up and realized her husband Donnie was not in the bed. She got up, worried he was sick, for Donnie had been recently treated for heart blockage both by a local doctor and a cardiologist in Roanoke.
Gloria went into the living room, thinking perhaps if Donnie was sick he would be on the couch as he would often do when not feeling well. But he was not there. Gloria began to look around the house for him.
To Gloria, it appeared as though Donnie had gotten up to take their dog Holly outside, as the dog's leash and collar were removed and neatly laid out in the way they always were after Holly came back inside.
Gloria also found the scarf Donnie used when going out into the cold and it was neatly folded up with his gloves placed on top. But Gloria did not see her husband.
"I began hollering for him," she said. When she received no answer and still could not findDonnie, Gloria happened to see that her bathroom door was slightly opened and the light on. She went inside.
"Donnie had been getting ready for work," she said, noting she could tell by his clothing. "He had already taken his coveralls off both arms and had it down to his chest."
Donnie was slumped on the floor in a sitting position. He was not conscious.
"I tried to see if he was all right and with me talking to him all the time," Gloria said. When he did not respond, she ran to the phone and dialed 911.
The line was busy. Gloria hung up and tried dialing 911 again.
She again received a busy signal.
She immediately called her mother, who lives next door, and said, "Mom, I need a rescue squad and I need one bad!"
Gloria's mother, Betty McGlophin, immediately hung up the phone and dialed 911. She, too, got a busy signal. She tried again and still could not get through.
Betty called her son, Jeffrey McGlophin Sr., who lives next door to her and asked him to try to call 911. He was not able to get through either, but he had the sheriff's number at hand and called there.
At first he received a busy signal, but on the second try was able to reach someone at the sheriff's department, who in turn contacted the 911 center.
The tone finally went out to the Millboro rescue squad. As members lived nearby, helped arrived in a few minutes.
The squad members started CPR and found a faint pulse and Donnie was moved to the squad vehicle. Millboro rescue squad had contacted the Hot Springs squad and was set to meet them in order to transfer Donnie to their advanced life support vehicle, which has a defibrillator. The Hot Springs squad transferred Donnie to Bath Community Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
His family was devastated. Gloria had been brought to the hospital by her brother, where she received the news her husband had not made it. His death was unexpected.
Donnie worked Tuesdays and Wednesdays at both TDS Telecom during the day and for The Homestead transportation from 6-10 p.m.
Gloria recalled how Donnie came home Wednesday night at 10:30. They soon went to bed afterward.
"We talked for awhile," she said, "and he didn't complain about any pain. Then he kissed me goodnight - that was the last time we talked."
While that was the last time Gloria and Donnie spoke to each other, their families began to furiously talk to each other as preparations for Donnie's funeral were made. The question in everyone's mind was: Why had 911 failed them? Failed to save Donnie?
Perhaps Donnie could have been saved in the fiveto 10 minutes it took to finally reach 911.
Rhonda Kennedy, Gloria's sister said, "Our (911) system failed our family and our community and we want to know the answers to why the system did not work."
Kennedy said someone called Gloria and Betty on Thursday and Friday to test the phones with 911. At first, the two women thought the calls were from someone in the 911 center as they were too distraught and in shock to understand. To them it seemed logical the calls came from the Warm Springs 911 center.
But on Monday, April 7, the family found out it was not someone from 911 who was testing the lines, but Verizon phone company, as the 997 phone numbers in Millboro are in the Verizon service area.
The Verizon representatives asked Gloria and Betty to test their phones by calling 911 to see if the calls would go through. On some days, the calls would go into 911 and on others, they did not.
Verizon asked the women to call their neighbors to see if those calls would go through. The women complied and calls to the friends and neighbors did work.
The last call Gloria received from Verizon was a message left on her answering machine. It was a recording stating the problem had been corrected and if she had any problems with her phone to call the company.
"I just hung up," Gloria said, "because there was nothing wrong with my phone. It was just to 911 (that there was a problem). Because if something was wrong with my phone, I wouldn't have been able to call my mother (Thursday night)."
Harry Mitchell, a Verizon representative, told The Recorder the problem with the Bryans' phone was "due to an inadvertent computer problem."
He stated that the two lines in Millboro used to call 911 did not connect with the router relay in Augusta County, and the phone calls never made it through to the 911 center in Warm Springs.
Mitchell also said the computer problem had been fixed and would be investigated internally within Verizon. He also said, "Our folks reached out to the Bryan family … We take our responsibility seriously … What happened was extremely rare - we regret it."
According to Mitchell, Verizon has 25 other centers in Virginia that successfully field 911 calls. Our routers," he said, "successfully connect tens of thousands of 911 calls a day all over the country."
Bath County has three phone service providers. TDS covers Warm Springs, Hot Springs, from the top of Warm Springs Mountain, Bacova, Cedar Creek and Carloover. MGW covers the Mountain Grove, McClung, Williamsville and Deerfieldareas. Verizon covers the Millboro area.
Ron Smith, owner of MGW, said all of his customers' calls to 911 go directly into the 911 center, as do all the TDS calls.
Captain Richard Armstrong of the Bath County Sheriff's officesaid he has worked with Verizon regarding the 911 calls from the Millboro area. "There were several problems with 911 in that area that week (when Bryan died)." Armstrong says the problem has been corrected and Verizon tested 911 calls with Millboro residents, making sure the calls came in properly.
The Bryan family urges all county residents to post all emergency numbers near their phones.
"We were taught to dial 911 so much," said Kennedy, "we removed the other emergency numbers near our phones." When Donnie's family needed to make the calls to try to save his life, their focus was on Donnie, not remembering how to dial the sheriff's number.
Donald Lane "Donnie" Bryan was an organ donor and the family believes a part of him lives on in others.
"If people would learn from our tragedy," Kennedy said, "and test their phones and post all emergency numbers, then we would feel something was accomplished through all this."
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