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An 11-year-old boy, identified as Brandon Oxford, died in a house fire just outside Ocala, Florida, on Nov. 1, 2005, after the first fire engine took 16 minutes to reach the scene, according to Marion County Fire Rescue.

The fire broke out on land the county fire department has since described as "a county enclave near Ocala," property that sat outside city limits but close to areas the city fire department normally covers. At the time, Ocala Fire Rescue and Marion County Fire Rescue dispatched crews strictly along city-county boundaries rather than sending whichever engine was physically nearest to a call.

The 16-minute wait for help raised questions among local officials about whether the city and county needed a formal automatic aid agreement, one that would let either agency's dispatchers send the closest available engine to a fire regardless of which side of the jurisdictional line it started on.

Marion County Fire Chief James Banta has since pointed to Oxford's death as an example of why the departments moved to that kind of system. "OFR and MCFR operate under an automatic aid agreement, enabling immediate support and real-time location sharing via our CAD systems," Banta said, adding that the arrangement "removes jurisdictional boundaries and provides for closest-unit response, ensuring the public doesn't wait for help due to their location."

Under that arrangement, computer-aided dispatch systems at both departments share real-time locations for engines and ambulances, so either agency can route its closest unit to an emergency without regard to city or county lines.

Fire officials have not publicly said when the automatic aid agreement was adopted or whether any formal investigation into Oxford's death cited a specific cause for the response delay beyond the jurisdictional dispatch practice in place at the time.