VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — When two Virginia Beach residents needed 911 the most, they were put on hold.
One woman called 911 to report finding her nephew face down in the family pool. Weeks later, a teenager called 911 to report his mother having a heart attack.
Both callers waited on hold and both of their loved ones later died.
Our investigation found both a staffing crisis and unfortunate timing can be blamed for their long wait times.
And in the case of one of those calls, the City of Virginia Beach now acknowledges that “appropriate procedures were not followed.”
911 call delayed during drowning in Virginia Beach
Bethany White was hosting an Independence Day party at her Princess Anne home on the afternoon of Sunday, July 2, when suddenly there was no sign of her 12-year-old nephew, Jordan Carr.
Family members scoured the property, checking everywhere for Jordan, including the backyard pool.
“I heard a scream and there he was in the water,” White said. “I knew I needed to call 911.”
As White and several others called 911, her husband, a retired police officer, jumped into the pool to rescue Jordan and began CPR.
But when White dialed 911 at 12:39:21 p.m., her call went straight to an automated message: "You’ve reached Virginia Beach 911, please stay on the line for the next available 911 professional."
“I was put on hold, and it was, I believe, about 30 to 40 seconds before they were able to take my call,” White said.
White’s phone records show she was on the phone with 911 for three minutes. Some of that time, she says, was spent waiting on hold. Public records from the City of Virginia Beach confirm White waited in the 911 call queue for 37 seconds before her call was answered.
“I just can’t imagine how we were put on hold when we were calling 911. I don’t know the reason for that,” White said.
Jada Lee, the Director of Virginia Beach Emergency Communications and Citizen Services (ECCS), looked back at the July 2 call to determine why White was placed on hold. What she found was an understaffed 911 center, and an unfortunate influx of phone calls at the very time the White family needed help.
“Their expectation when they dial those three numbers is they’re going to get a live person the very first time. But unfortunately, that’s not the case every time,” Lee explained.
Virginia Beach 911 had only eight people working the phones on the afternoon of July 2. They would need an additional four call takers to be considered fully staffed.
Between the window of 12:30 and 12:45 p.m., as White called for help, dispatchers received a total of 18 calls to 911 and 10 calls to the non-emergency line.
Records show the four people who called about the drowning sat in the 911 queue from anywhere between five seconds and 138 seconds.
“Once the call was answered, the processing time was seconds,” Lee said. “But due to the influx of calls received during that time frame, the call takers were processing other calls for service.”
Lee said the initial call for service was entered at 12:40:37 p.m., which was more than a minute after White first dialed 911.
Both Police Department Headquarters and Fire Station 5 are less than a mile from the home where Jordan drowned. A time-stamped photo on White’s phone shows Virginia Beach firefighters and police performing CPR on Jordan by 12:47 p.m.
But as White reflects on July 2, she wonders "What if?"
“I don’t know if those seconds would have saved Jordan’s life, but we’ll never know,” White said. “But I do know that something has to change so that 911 can answer their calls the first time for people that need them.”
911 call dropped before woman died from heart attack: 'I got hung up on'
Daniel Gray, a 17-year-old high school senior in Virginia Beach, is mapping out a future without his mother in his life.
On Sunday, July 30 — in an incident separate from the drowning, but coincidentally just down the road — Gray found his 42-year-old mother outside on the ground having a medical emergency.
Gray said he dialed 911 and got the automated message: "You’ve reached Virginia Beach 911, please stay on the line for the next available 911 professional."
“You know, it’s tough thinking that when there’s a life or death situation, you’re going to be put on hold,” Gray said.
Gray hung up and called back. Again, he said he was placed on hold.
“Next thing I do is call 911. You know, I’m put on hold. And while that’s happening, she stopped breathing,” he said.
Gray said it took a third call to 911 before someone answered.
Our investigation found only eight people were available to take calls at Virginia Beach 911 on the afternoon of July 30. And like the drowning, Gray called at a time when there was low staffing and high call volumes.
Dispatchers were working calls for more than a dozen other people across the city.
Between 12:36 and 12:49 p.m., Virginia Beach 911 received 19 calls. Seven of those were about other “high-priority incidents” happening at the same time:
- Three calls were about a person having a heart attack on Sandbridge Beach.
- Three other callers were reporting the same car accident with injuries.
- And one call was about an active fight in progress.
But it wasn’t just the wait that left Gray with questions about his 911 experience.
“I was put on hold for about 15-20 seconds, and the other 15-20 seconds I was answering questions before I got hung up on,” Gray said. “As soon as I started saying my address, I got hung up on.”
Records from Virginia Beach 911 show the call was disconnected 1 minute and 43 seconds after it was received. Records show the 911 call taker attempted to call back six times but reached voicemail each time.
“I don’t have an answer as to why the line got disconnected,” ECCS Director Jada Lee said.
After our interview with Lee, her IT team did test calls to recreate the disconnection incident but were not able to conclusively determine who hung up on whom.
“The data reflected the same result when the IT team hung up on the call taker and when the call taker hung up on the IT team,” a city spokesperson said in a statement to 13News Now.
Also following the interview, the City of Virginia Beach said further review of the call revealed a “discrepancy.” They are now following up on the matter in accordance with HR policy.
“Following the interview, it was regretfully discovered that appropriate procedures were not followed, which is why ECCS did not have a record. The City is now handling this personnel matter in accordance with City HR policy. Our goal is to make 911/311 a safe and trusted public safety service for residents. We expect all of our dispatchers to follow protocol and are committed to appropriate training and accountability of all our employees. While public safety arrived on the scene within 4 minutes 54 seconds of the neighbor's call, we nonetheless regret that this experience may have caused stress for the family during their emergency.” - Tiffany Russell, Director of Communications for the City of Virginia Beach.
Gray’s mother died of a "widowmaker" heart attack, something only 12% of people survive, according to the American Heart Association.
“I don’t want to hold a grudge,” Gray said. “I’m hoping that they’re just short-staffed. That as soon as they heard about this situation, they dealt with it, and then moved on to the next person.”
Moving on to the next person is exactly what 911 dispatchers are trained to do.
The problem in Virginia Beach is that there are simply not enough of them.
Staffing crisis at 911 centers leads to longer wait times
Since Jada Lee took over as director at ECCS in 2021, numbers show progress in increasing staffing.
But the 73 people working right now are still short of the 108 she could have.
“We’re in a staffing crisis, and we have been since about 2014,” Lee explained.
It’s not just Virginia Beach. A report released this summer by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) found that 82% of 911 centers are understaffed.
Lee, who has spent three decades working her way up the command at Virginia Beach 911, said low pay hurts recruiting and high stress hurts retention.
The starting pay for dispatchers right now in Virginia Beach is $41,089.20. Once hired, they undergo an eight-week academy before working 12-hour shifts, four days a week. While there has been progress made in hiring, there are still struggles when it comes to answering the phones promptly.
NENA sets a nationwide industry standard that 90% of 911 calls should be answered within 15 seconds, and 95% answered within 20 seconds.
In Virginia Beach, Lee said the current average wait time of 23 seconds is not acceptable in her view.
“We apologize to any caller who doesn’t reach a call taker when they first call 911,” Lee said. “We always do our very best to answer calls as quickly as we can. We don’t want anyone to ever feel like they are not going to get the help that they need. We recognize that they expect to get help right away, and we want to be able to do that for them.”
A NENA representative called Virginia Beach’s 23-second average a “fair achievement” given the staffing shortages.
Lee says technology can help improve efficiency and starting in January, Virginia Beach 911 is updating its phone system so that a live person will not be required to call back on 911 hang-ups. Instead, an automated attendant will call back and ask the caller to press 1 if they are having an emergency and to press 2 if their call was an accident.
The hope is this new technology won’t tie up as many dispatchers who are desperately needed to answer emergency calls.