Cell phone towers and distance are being blamed for a fire on October 18 that destroyed the North Naples, FL mansion owned by Gurcharn Dang, founder and president of Softrim Corp., an Estero-based information technology company.
NBC affiliate WBBH-TV 2 reports that North Collier Fire Rescue took 10 minutes to respond to the blaze, and crews blame distance and cell phone towers, which caused the 911 call to be rerouted.
Battalion Chief James Cunningham told WBBH-TV/2 that target response time is between four to six minutes, but the 9,400 SF home on Dunberry Lane is inside gated Quail West Golf & Country Club and several minutes from the entrance. Additionally, Quail West is closer to the Lee County cell phone tower, therefore the call went to Lee County dispatch and was rerouted to Collier County dispatch. That cost firefighters 2-to-3 extra minutes, Cunningham said, but in this fire he was not sure if those precious minutes made a difference. Theories for cause include propane or gas lines feeding into the attic.
Both the Naples Daily News and WBBH-TV 2 report that fire alarms first went off, alerting a security company that set off a call to 911 and the appropriate North Collier Fire District. However, when Dang called 911 from his cell phone in the driveway, the 911 call rerouted to Lee County.
The communications manager at the the Collier County Sheriff’s Office told WBBH-TV 2: ”a call may ‘bounce’ to another site if the closest site is out of capacity (too many calls) or if the line of sight to the closest site is blocked. Generally, the phone will stick with its primary carrier’s sites (Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.), but if none of those are available, it will roam onto that of another carrier.”
The fire caused an estimated $2.5 million in damage. The Dangs purchased the home in 2004 for $2.85 million.
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