By Nikie Mayo, Anderson Independent-Mail
Original publication date: Aug. 26, 2011 

ANDERSON, S.C. — A piece of overheated equipment caused a small fire Friday night at Anderson County’s 911 dispatch center.

The fire affected at least one computer in the dispatch center on South Towers Street in Anderson, but authorities said it did not cause an interruption in 911 service.

Sheriff’s spokesman Chad McBride said the equipment malfunction “created a lot of smoke,” but caused no structural damage to the 62-year-old building.

No one was injured in the fire, which was reported around 8:15 p.m., and was out just a few minutes later.

Taylor Jones, the county’s director of emergency preparedness, said the fire was caused by a piece of $5,000 power-backup equipment that got too hot.

Jones said a worker in the building was able to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. The city fire department was also dispatched to the building.

“I give the dispatchers a lot of credit,” Jones said. “They could have panicked and run, but they just acted as they had been trained to do. They probably kept us from going offline.”

Jones said that the fire and smoke had created “minor glitches” in the communications system, but nothing that would be noticeable to residents or that would interrupt 911 service.

The fire is the latest in a series of problems at the dispatch center in downtown Anderson.

The building was struck by lightning on July 4, which damaged nearly all of the $3 million of equipment inside.

Just after the lightning strike, dispatchers were temporarily moved to the county’s emergency operations center near Anderson Regional Airport.

Less than two weeks later, in mid-July, Anderson County Council member Eddie Moore questioned Sheriff John Skipper about a bug problem at the communications center.

Moore said that surgery was needed to remove insect larvae from a dispatcher’s back, and the sheriff acknowledged that there had been a “serious problem” with bugs there.

County officials have said they would like to move their 911 operations closer to the airport on a permanent basis, if they could find the money to do it.

Last year, dispatchers took 405,000 emergency calls in the building on South Towers Street. 

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