New Mother Upset at 911 Response

An Orangeburg (SC) woman is upset over how a Bamberg dispatcher handled her 911 call for help last month, after she had to pull over along a highway to deliver her daughter’s baby. According to Olivia Gentol, the dispatcher asked her 19 times for her location during the 11-minute call she made for her daughter Jennifer. The two were enroute to a hospital at 5:45 a.m. but had to pull over when the contractions became too intense. Gentol told a reporter that a dispatcher had been fired or quit over the incident. In a later interview with a reporter, Deputy county administrator John Smith said the handling of the call was an “anomaly,” and it wasn’t how most such calls are handled. He offered an explanation that included how cellular 911 calls are handled, confusion over Gentol’s hospital destination, and confusion over which highway Gentol was on. Read the original news story here, and then the county’s response here.