Enon/Mad River Township Fire Chief Tracy Young announced Monday night that he had launched his own investigation into his department’s response to the report of a possible drowning in Enon last week. Young opened the investigation in response to Clark County Commissioner John Detrick’s negative comments on the situation, which were published by a local news station last week. He spoke passionately in defending his crew’s response, saying their heroic efforts were undermined by Detrick’s “irresponsible” remarks, saying he believes Detrick exploited a local family’s tragedy while trying to raise support for a combined county 911 dispatching center.

“To make an example of that poor man’s family in order to further his own agenda—it’s horrible that a Commissioner would do that,” Young said.

The incident in question occurred the evening of Tuesday, March 29 just south of the VFW, when longtime Enon resident Mike Gural endured some sort of accident while attending to the pond in his front yard. Gural was pulled from the water just moments later by Enon crews, yet Detrick used the incident as an example of why Mad River Township should make the switch to a combined county 911 dispatching system.

The debate between Detrick and the Mad River Township Board of Trustees has been brought to light in recent weeks, with both sides claiming their solution is what they know to be right for township residents. Detrick has argued that the township is wasting tens of thousands of dollars by maintaining their own dispatching system, while the township asserts that the quality provided by their long-term dispatchers is far superior than anyone on the county level, as their employees have become very familiar with township families and locations in their many years of experience.

Chief Young was joined by Trustees Kathy Estep, Bob McClure, and Joe Catanzaro in defending the smooth execution by township dispatchers and first responders alike, with the entire board delivering some harsh criticism of Detrick’s publicized complaints about the response.

A report published Friday, April 1 by WHIO, states that Detrick used to incident to highlight the township’s need to switch to county dispatching services. In the article, Detrick is quoted as saying that his issue with the response was the need to transfer the call to Mad River Township dispatchers after first being routed to the primary county dispatch center. That report also references the alleged 911 call originally placed by Gural’s family, where the township dispatcher asks the caller to repeat information because of a bad connection. Chief Young said the call referenced in WHIO’s article is not the right instance, saying the record they obtained was from another instance—not Gural’s.

Young shared the results of his investigation into the Gural response—saying he found no complications in communication between dispatchers whatsoever.

“After a review of the audio recordings, I heard no complications in communication between the CCSO Dispatchers and the Mad River Township Dispatcher J. Burns,” Young’s report states. “The CCSO Dispatcher process time took 41 seconds, at that point a second CCSO Dispatcher contacted Mad River Township J. Burns and relayed the information. During the 54-second call to Mad River Township Dispatcher J. Burns, I heard good communication between the two agencies with a sense of urgency. No complications were noted during the call.”

Young also provided a minute-by-minute breakdown of activity within the response, saying the original call went into Clark County dispatch at 7:02 p.m., and township crews had arrived and pulled Gural from the water by 7:15—some 13 minutes later, which Young said is average for a department like Enon’s. As soon as Gural was pulled from the water, first responders applied a Lucas Device, which performs automatic chest compressions, and they were able to bring back his pulse by the time they got him to the hospital.

Detrick told WHIO that “Gural’s death probably couldn’t have been avoided...because of the length of time he was in the pond,” but said that “time is of an essence when somebody is sick.”

Trustee Estep said she was concerned that Detrick would continue to use the tragedy as an endorsement for county dispatching even though he admitted that it likely wouldn’t have saved Gural’s life anyway.

“I am so disappointed with some of the comments Commissioner Detrick made,” she said. “He made some accusations that were unfounded…it was cruel and uncalled for, and it appears he did this to try to promote county dispatching.”

Estep announced during the board’s previous meeting in March that she had recently met with Detrick to explain why the township is not interested in utilizing county dispatching services, and noted Monday night that she was taken aback by his comments on Gural’s incident because she thought she had expressed her opinions to him in a courteous manner.

“I just met with him to discuss this and to try to iron everything out—and I told him then that I wasn’t comfortable criticizing county dispatching in public yet, but I think it’s time we call a meeting to discuss some of the other issues we keep having with them,” Estep said.

“It’s upsetting to us, and also to his family, I would imagine,” she added.

Young cited at least six erroneous dispatches from the county system just since the beginning of this year—saying his crews are either not dispatched at all, or sent to incorrect addresses that sometimes aren’t even located in this county.

“January 1, 2016—a caller called us and told us to cancel the squad because it was taking too long. We didn’t even know they needed a squad in the first place because CCSO dropped the call and didn’t take any information,” Young said. “CCSO said they were too busy—that’s the exact language used by a communications supervisor—they said they knew it was no excuse, but they’d dropped the call because they were too busy.”

He also noted that county dispatchers seem to have difficulty understanding the multiple Jackson Streets, Jackson Roads, and Jackson Drives in the area, as his crews were once dispatched by the county to Jackson Road in Green Township, when the caller needed assistance at Jackson Street in the city of Springfield. Young said they were also dispatched to Jackson Drive in Clifton, which is not in their jurisdiction.

“This happens all the time…they have a high turnover rate, they’re dispatching for multiple departments…and they don’t know what mile marker our township begins or ends at—it’s a free-for-all on the interstate,” Young stated.

He said it is important to highlight the productivity of the Gural response, and noted that all agencies and personnel involved should be commended for their actions. Young said his two first responders who pulled Gural from the pond “put their own lives at risk by entering the frigid water,” also noting that after they loaded him into his boat, they attempted to paddle back to shore but the paddle broke in the process.

“They risked their lives, but that was overshadowed by the Commissioner’s negative comments,” said Young. “Those two guys did a great thing—they were blown away that he didn’t even care,” he said of Detrick.

Detrick spoke to the Eagle earlier in the day Monday and maintained that the township’s leaders are being “stubborn” by not switching to county dispatching, as he said they are essentially wasting thousands of dollars by keeping their own system.

“They’re the only township out of 65 in west-central Ohio that does their own dispatching,” said Detrick. “They can never circumvent our dominant line, so why not save the $100,000 and go with us?”

“We’ve been trying to get them to see the benefits of our system for two years now, but apparently they don’t want to save $100,000 by going to county dispatching,” Detrick added.

Estep said Detrick was invited to Monday night’s meeting but declined the offer, and when asked by a member of the audience why he declined, she and Trustee McClure said Detrick told them that he “was not going to come down to Enon and be part of a turkey shoot.”

The board announced that they have tentative plans to meet with Detrick this coming Friday at the Enon fire house, but the final meeting times will be posted on the door of the fire house and the Enon Post Office once the time is set.