WRAL Investigates reported last week on college parties that were causing issues for neighbors in Durham County.

Orange County's Emergency Services Director Kirby Saunders saw the story, and reached out to WRAL Investigates because he said Orange County is having the same problems.

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"The potential here for significant bodily injury, even death, is really high," Saunders said. 

Saunders said EMS has already had to respond to at least three injuries at these parties in the last five years.

"They have ranged from significant trauma – falling off of a U-Haul truck, for example – to alcohol poisoning," Saunders said. 

Saunders said he fears that someone could die.

"We have found very serious concerns,” he said. “[It includes] overcrowding of tents that have walls on them [and] improper electrical usage [of] generators, all while the floor is comprised of flammable straw, for example."

Saunders said that the parties are not confined to one particular location, but rather various farms throughout Orange County. Like our previous reporting about the parties in Durham County, Saunders said that the students involved are from Duke University. He believes it is fraternities that rent the fields and organize the events.

"It scares me to think about what goes on," Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said. 

"I've been to many of these parties as a road deputy before I was elected as sheriff," Blackwood said. "The behavior that we see ranges from people having a good time to people indulging in too much intoxicating beverages and either passing out [or] getting sick."

Blackwood and Saunders explained that rented buses bring students to the parties, but sometimes the students miss the return trip.

"They’ll start out by walking up the highway intoxicated in and out of traffic, and they’ll end up ultimately on somebody’s doorstep banging on their door at 3 a.m., and that’s never a good thing," Blackwood said. 

Saunders and Blackwood said they hope to educate the landowners of the legal risks involved in hosting these parties. 

"I imagine if [the students] don't have a place to go, that would stop it," Saunders said.

If needed, Blackwood said they will charge people involved, but that's not his goal.

"I'd rather have the party not exist at all," he said. "We've all got to work together."

As WRAL Investigates previously reported, Duke University's Director of Off Campus & Community Life, Elinor Landess, said the university does not support these parties.

In a statement, Landess wrote that Duke has "created several programs to encourage students to host parties on campus. Student groups can reserve a tent on Central Campus to host large-scale events that would otherwise be too large to host elsewhere on campus...The amendment to the alcohol policy to allow kegs on campus for registered events and to allow student fee money to be spent on alcohol for students age 21 and older supports Duke's efforts to encourage students to gather socially on campus.”