I couldn't live with myself if that was my call and I didn't act on it.

LAUREL, Ind. —
When you have an emergency, the first thing most of us think to do is call 911. But what happens when the people taking your call don't send help?

Last year six people died, when flooding washed away the Sanes bridge in the small town of Laurel, Indiana. Two of the victims were Josh Mosier's little girls.

"That's the reoccurring nightmare, is seeing that and hearing them scream. And it's like I'm behind a wall and I can't get to them," Mosier said.

Mosier was driving into work on that rainy morning, March 20, 2020, when he got a terrifying call.

"He said 'I don't know how to tell you this, but I believe it's her van upside down in the creek.'"

Inside that van were Mosier's two little girls, 4-year old Kylee and 7-year old Elysium, along with their mother, Felina Lewis and her teenage son.

Mosier replays that morning over and over again in his head.

"I wanted to believe that they died immediately and that wasn't the case. They were screaming and headlights were bouncing up and down out of the trees," Mosier said.

After days of pouring rain, flood waters were so high they washed away the bridge above. When the van was finally pulled from the water, no one was inside.

"I had to find them. Real simple. I had to find them," Mosier said.

Mosier hopped in and started wading through the water, searching for his babies. About a mile downstream right in his backyard, he found his youngest.

"I just picked her up and squeezed her and screamed and cried and I just carried her through here, through that little pasture up to my house. I laid her down in the garage and I told her that loved her and that she didn't have to yell anymore, that I found her and I told her I wasn't done yet, that I had to find her sister," he said.

A short time later, he found his oldest daughter the same way. No one escaped. The girl’s mother and brother along with two other men whose car was also swept away all died that morning. Six lives were gone.

What Mosier didn't realize until days later is this tragedy could have been prevented. Three calls were made to 911 that morning. One, just after 3 a.m., a second one at 4:18 a.m. and then again at 4:46 a.m.

The second emergency call to come foreshadowed what was about to happen.

"The bridge here on Sanes Creek at the bottom of Sanes Hill is completely washed out. It's gone! Somebody better get down here and block it off before somebody goes into the river," the caller warned dispatchers.

But help never came. Within 40 minutes of that 911 call, the girl’s mother who was on her way to work and taking her kids to the babysitters came down Sanes Hill and drove right into the rushing water.

"All it would have taken was a car with flashing lights to block the road and the traffic would have been averted, and we wouldn't be sitting here today," Mosier said.

Mosier hired attorney Tim Devereux to find out why the three Franklin County dispatchers inside the call center that day didn't send help. What they discovered was disturbing.

The complaint filed against Franklin County, the Sheriff Department and Highway Department claims 911 operators were making numerous postings on their personal social media accounts at the exact time the 911 calls came in.

Hours later, while rescuers were still searching for the victims the chief deputy called into dispatch also questioning how this happened. He asked the dispatcher on duty in the afternoon to see if someone called and said the bridge was out around 3 a.m.

"God help whoever didn't pass that on if they did," the chief deputy told the dispatcher.

Then, the dispatcher tells him there was a call at 4:18 a.m. saying, "advise that the bridge on Sanes Creek is completely washed away."

The chief deputy then asked what the dispatcher did with it and she told him it was turned into an information-only call.

The chief deputy couldn't believe it.

"Are you f-ing kidding me?" he said.

An information call means a deputy does not have to respond.

Neighbors like Roni and Robin Ault who were the first to call 911 that night are angry. They feel like they tried to help and weren't taken seriously.

Roni Ault explained, "The road was getting worse. It was within minutes we were stuck down there and couldn't get back and we knew within an hour traffic was going to start getting heavy and people have to get work."

For two hours the Ault's watched and worried.

"I'm worried about somebody getting hurt! And that's the reason we called to tell them," Robin Ault explained.

Two hours after their first call, Roni Ault called again. This time telling dispatchers a van, filled with kids is in the water. The sounds still haunt him.

"We see headlights disappear. When they floated back up, they were really murky looking. You heard screams and hollers. It sounds like children, and then everything just went silent," he said.

In response to the lawsuit, the county denies it was negligent and claims as a government agency, they are immune from liability.

Sheree Paolello, a news anchor at sister station WLWT who has been investigating this case, called the Franklin County Sheriff and the attorney representing the county but has yet to receive a response.

The bridge was quickly repaired but Mosier believes until real changes are made within the Franklin County dispatch center and call centers all across the state of Indiana, it's only a matter of time before something like this happens again.

"It has to change. There has to be a different system, a different procedure when those calls come in so that there's not another family sitting here talking to you the way I am. That it's handled differently. Maybe a life will be saved," he said.

Mosier said the only way he's gotten through the last year is because he has two more kids to take care of. That's the only thing keeping him going.

As for those dispatchers who were working inside the Franklin County dispatch center that morning, the 911 supervisor was fired by the Sheriff's Department about a week after the incident but the two other dispatchers who took those 911 calls were not.