9/11- County considers backup 911 center

Recent failures at dispatch center prompt $100,000 proposal to convert C’ville Fire Station into second 911 center.

(As published by Cortland Standard, Corey Preton reporting)

Three recent failures at the county dispatch center, believed to stem back to an Aug. 24 electrical storm, have prompted county officials to consider setting up a secondary dispatch center for emergency situations in Cortlandville.

The former Cortlandville Fire Station on Route 281 already has some of the needed infrastructure to become a secondary dispatch center, primarily the ability to “tone,” or directly ring the alarm of area fire departments, the Legislature’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee was told this morning.

To outfit the facility with three dispatch consoles, the capability to network with the county’s computers and radio capabilities could cost approximately $100,000 County Administrator Scott Schrader said.

However Schrader, Sheriff Lee Price and Fire Coordinator Bob Duell stressed that the county cannot afford to have significant gaps in its dispatch services.

“We have to do everything we can, we can’t miss a call if our system goes down,” Duell said. “I think you have to have a backup to everything, especially something like this, and it probably needs to be done as soon as possible.”

On Aug. 24, a lightning strike knocked the dispatch center out of service for about one hour and 45 minutes, Schrader told the committee.

The 911 system went out again Saturday for 10 minutes, Duell said, and Monday for 40 minutes.

The county has preventative measures such as lightning arrestors set up to deal with lightning strikes, Schrader said, but the lightning apparently infiltrated the building not through typical power lines, but through telephone lines.

“Honestly I think it caused more damage than a direct hit would have,” Schrader said.
The two other recent systemic problems are believed to be related to the lightning strike, Schrader said, and the county is working to repair glitches in the system.

The county has asked the vendor who sold the county its new dispatch machines, which were installed earlier this year, to look at ways to mitigate the problems.

Financially, the repairs will likely be covered by the county’s insurance, Schrader said.
“I’m not necessarily concerned about another lightning strike, but it’s clear that there’s a need for a backup system,” Schrader said.

When the system goes down, the city currently serves as the backup public-safety answering point, Schrader said, however the city does not have toning capabilities, or the ability to do computer aided dispatch.

Because there is no toning capability when the dispatch center is down, a call goes out to all fire departments to man their radios for any instances of emergencies.

During the Aug. 24 storm, Price said he and Duell stationed themselves in the communications tower on Tower Road and relayed calls from the city to the various fire departments via radio.

“It’s a rudimentary method that can work for a very short term, but if we have a situation where we need a backup station for a couple of weeks, that’s not going to get it done,” Schrader said.

The potential secondary center in Cortlandville would be unmanned, meaning there would be a brief hole in dispatch services while county dispatch officers were in transit, but the center would have all the necessary capabilities that the primary center has, Schrader said.

The committee agreed that it was worth looking at a secondary site in Cortlandville, and asked Schrader to develop a plan outlining how the project would work and how much it would cost.

They made lightning arrestors / surge protection for phone lines. Might cost less than $100K to do this rather than dump a ton of money at the Cortlanville fire station (and would keep future maintenance costs as well.

Just another example of spending more money rather than finding a better solution.