April 01--HIGH POINT -- You might've thought the same thing.
If you were an emergency dispatcher working the graveyard shift on April Fools' Day, and you got a frantic call claiming the fire department was on fire, you'd be tempted to dismiss it as a prank, wouldn't you?
That's exactly what happened in the early-morning hours of April 1, 1950, when an explosion ripped through the downstairs portion of High Point's Fire Station No. 4 on North Main Street. When firefighters called to report their building was on fire, they had trouble convincing the dispatcher they were telling the truth.
"The dispatcher didn't believe them, because it was April Fools' Day," confirms Capt. Denita Lynch, public information officer for the High Point Fire Department.
When first contacted about the incident, Lynch had never heard the April Fools' Day angle -- nor had any current members of the department she mentioned it to -- but when she contacted a couple of retired department members who are well up in age, they were familiar with the story, she said.
"They both knew about it," Lynch said. "It was before they came on, but they remembered hearing stories about it."
The High Point Enterprise story reporting the fire gave only a brief mention of the dispatcher's doubt, without actually referencing April Fools' Day as the reason for that doubt.
"When a call came into the central fire department switchboard, there was some reluctance on the part of the operator to believe one of High Point's fire stations was on fire," the paper reported.
The story apparently was picked up by a wire service, too, because a version of the story -- as reported in the April 2, 1950 edition of the Waterloo Sunday Courier of Waterloo, Iowa -- is featured on the Museum of Hoaxes website, which collects April Fools' Day hoaxes and purported hoaxes.
That story actually reported it was firefighters at another city fire station who thought they were being pranked, but Lynch says it was the dispatcher.
According to the Enterprise, firefighters from Station No. 1 arrived in time to help put out the fire, and no injuries were reported.
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