TRACY, Calif. — Firefighters responding to a blaze that destroyed a massive medical equipment warehouse in Northern California and sent embers flying for miles were hindered by sprinklers and hydrants that weren’t working, authorities said Friday.

The 1 million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) warehouse in Tracy, a city about 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) east of San Francisco, supplied medical equipment to area hospitals. It’s owned by Medline, a major medical-surgical products provider of equipment such as latex gloves, masks, surgical instruments and other medical supplies.

Thick black smoke billowed Friday from the site, as firefighters continued to put out hotspots.

Authorities said they don’t yet know why the water system failed during the blaze but it appeared to be a problem with the facility’s system, not city supply. The blaze broke out around 1 p.m. Thursday. Crews found the building’s sprinkler system wasn’t working and hydrants on the property lacked water pressure, Tracy Deputy Fire Chief Brian Bagley said. A fire official found little or no water was flowing through either system, he said.

Firefighters were forced to try to connect to city hydrants instead. The building was engulfed by fire within 40 minutes, Bagley said.

“We did a defensive approach at that point,” he said.

The facility had been evacuated, and no one was injured.

Embers from the blaze sparked two grassfires and set pallets and multiple big rig trailers at a nearby FedEx facility ablaze. Firefighters were able to knock those fires down.

Crews overnight had to contend with new fires in trailers that were loaded with supplies.

Bagley said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would help investigate the cause of the blaze, but authorities would probably not be able to get into the warehouse for at least a couple of more days. The sprinkler system had been tested in January by an outside company and no issues were found, Bagley said.

The warehouse is in a massive industrial park that also houses fulfillment and distribution centers for Amazon, Home Depot and FedEx.

No homes were evacuated. Bagley recommended people near the fire stay indoors but said air quality tests had not raised any “grave concerns.”

When Rickey Spivey Towner had a heart attack in his Coachella Valley home last September, his stepdaughter Megan Conner found him unconscious and called 911. 

But there was a problem: The equipment used to answer 911 calls at the Desert Hot Springs Police Department malfunctioned and Conner couldn’t connect with a dispatcher for more than two minutes, according to dispatch records obtained by NBC Bay Area.

In a recording of one of Conner’s 911 calls, the dispatcher is immediately disconnected, and Conner is met by silence for 25 seconds until the dispatcher can get back on the line.

Towner did not survive. His family said he died of a heart attack.

Towner’s death may be the first documented fatality potentially linked to the state’s ongoing 911 system overhaul.

Newly obtained records under the California Public Records Act reveal the connection problems were linked to call processing equipment approved by the state as part of California’s troubled Next Generation 911 rollout, sold by a state contractor called NGA 911, and deployed by the Desert Hot Springs Police Department in 2023. 

Police records reveal emergency dispatchers were unexpectedly logged out of their phone system as Conner called 911 to report her stepfather lying unresponsive on the floor.

It’s unclear if Towner could have been saved had his stepdaughter been able to summon help faster, but records show a police dispatch manager sent a scathing email shortly after his death to NGA 911. She also copied top officials with the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).

“People’s lives are on the line and your failed system may have just cost this person their life,” the dispatch manager wrote on September 12, 2025. “I believe that your engineers are continuously making changes to our live environment which is affecting our user experience. Which again is unacceptable, especially when I had continuously asked you to stop.”

Records from the police department lay out the details of what went wrong and show Conner had to call 911 three times that morning before she was finally able to relay any information to a dispatcher. It took nearly two-and-a-half minutes.

The national standard calls for 90% of 911 calls to be answered within 15 seconds.

The equipment that failed is called call processing equipment (CPE) and it was purchased by Desert Hot Springs police after Cal OES suspended new sales of existing call processing equipment and began pushing dispatch centers toward cloud-based systems designed for the state’s Next Generation 911 network.

State officials say the Next Generation 911 project is a critical upgrade to California’s antiquated 911 system and will improve emergency response.

After a series of reports by NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit, however, the overhaul has faced mounting scrutiny from lawmakers over delays, technical problems and a rising price tag exceeding $450 million.

WATCH NBC BAY AREA’S INVESTIGATIONS CA 911: TOO BIG TO FAIL

Like most emergency dispatch centers across California, Desert Hot Springs has not switched over to the new Next Gen 911 network. However, it was among the first to use the new cloud-based CPE that Cal OES promoted after suspending sales of legacy call processing equipment that failed to meet Next Generation 911 standards.

NGA 911’s equipment had passed state lab testing conducted by Cal OES and was among a handful of vendors approved to sell the new cloud-based CPE when Desert Hot Springs purchased its equipment.

While Cal OES, NGA 911, and Desert Hot Springs police were discussing the equipment failure during Conner’s 911 call, the family says they were left in the dark. They say nobody had told them about what happened until they were recently contacted by NBC Bay Area.

“Why didn’t I know any of this,” said Lakisha Romero, Towner’s daughter. “My dad has been talked about around the state and I had no clue what was going on.”

A timeline of “major events and challenges” in the state’s implementation of Next Gen 911 that has since been posted on Cal OES’ website shows the CPE purchased by Desert Hot Springs had been plagued by persistent problems since it was first deployed more than two years before Towner’s death.

“911 calls that were disconnected before being answered by the [911 center] are not displaying for dispatchers,” the Cal OES timeline states. “A workaround was immediately implemented that required dispatchers to use third party technology. NGA 911, LLC is notified of the problem and indicates it is working on a solution.”

About a year later, the Wasco Police Department also purchased NGA 911 call processing equipment and experienced “the same problems as [Desert Hot Springs],” according to Cal OES.

By May 2025, police in Desert Hot Springs and Wasco had opened roughly 300 trouble tickets concerning issues with NGA 911’s CPE, including 17 of “critical importance” and 99 of “high importance.” Two months later, both departments canceled their CPE orders with NGA 911.

In a statement, the Desert Hot Springs Police Department said it “worked collaboratively with NGA and Cal OES regarding operational and technical concerns that arose during implementation and operation.”

Cal OES said it took “immediate steps” to help both departments swap out the problematic CPE with equipment from a new vendor, but the process took months to complete and had not occurred before Towner died.

Three weeks after his death, Cal OES said it removed NGA 911 from the approved CPE vendor list and the agency eventually cancelled the company’s CPE contract in March of this year. 

Cal OES declined an on-camera interview request but said in an email the agency is committed to oversight and accountability of its contractors.

NGA has not responded to NBC Bay Area’s repeated requests for comment regarding Towner’s death and the equipment failure in Desert Hot Springs. It has posted this timeline on its website explaining its project record in California.

California’s Next Generation 911 project is years behind schedule, but state officials say there’s a new plan in place to get the project moving forward again and hope to have the Los Angeles region hooked up to the network in time for the 2028 Olympics. 

The state agency recently requested another $142 million to meet that goal, which would be paid for by an additional 13 cent surcharge on the phone bill of Californians. 

As the state moves forward with Next Generation 911 and upgraded call processing equipment that 911 centers desperately need, Towner’s family continues to seek answers.

Romero visited the Desert Hot Springs Police Department in May to get some clarity about what happened in her father’s case but said she was disappointed by the response.

“I went asking for answers and nobody wanted to tell me anything,” Romero said.

In a statement, the department said it’s “committed to transparency and reliable emergency response services.”

Towner’s family said nobody has contacted them about the long history of problems associated with the 911 equipment and questioned why it wasn’t removed a long time ago.

“Why should it take someone dying for them to do that,” Romero asked.

Candice Nguyen is the reporter on this story. If you have a comment or a question, email her at candice.nguyen@nbcuni.com.