Emergency Operating Center Back to Full Strength

By Jonathan Weaver

A reoccurring problem at the Armstrong County 9-1-1 Emergency Operations Center in Rayburn Township has long been diagnosed, and is now thought to be completely repaired.

At Kittanning Borough’s December council meeting, Kittanning Hose Company #4 Fire Chief and Borough Fire Marshal Earl “Buzz” Kline requested borough council send a letter of dissatisfaction with the radio system.

“Since this new multimillion dollar project has been implemented, it’s been going down on a regular basis,” Chief Kline said. “It hampers the police department, the ambulance service…they need to iron their problems out.

“God forbid if somebody dies or a fireman is killed over insufficient radio service.”

Council members unanimously agreed to the request.

9-1-1 Coordinator Ron Baustert said he received a letter from Chief Kline, but it’s not the radios that were the problem.

“Chief Kline sent me a letter - his letter to me and to the commissioners basically said he was concerned with the new state-of-the-art radios and the glitches that take the system offline, Baustert said.

“The reality is: the radio system did not fail,” Baustert said. “We’ve had several failures with the UPS system – they were defects in the equipment. There were actually repeated defects of the same component.”

That component within the Uninterruptable Power Supply -not only supposed to charge the batteries, but keeps the batteries charged continuously – failed and also blew a fuse during one of the system failures since this past summer.

Troubleshooting the two-year-old system caused technicians to methodically go through each step, subsequently also finding other problems to repair.

And, when the system is under repair, it is offline for a longer period of time, putting the Emergency Operations Center at a greater risk of power failure during an electrical storm.

The new systems take about 30-45 minutes to reboot after a power failure.

“It was not the radios that failed – everything failed because the battery system failed,” Baustert reiterated. “Even if we were still on the old radio system, our radios would have (gone) down.

“There are as many safeguards or backups in the system as there can be.”

Baustert called Schneider Electric and manufacturer Renmark, Inc. “diligent” in their handling of the repairs, shipping parts overnight and even sending a technician to work at the center for eight hours Thanksgiving Day.

A preventative maintenance agreement was signed with Renmark, Inc. in September

The current system is shared with Indiana and Westmoreland Counties – which allowed either county to monitor Armstrong County 9-1-1 calls for the length of the power outage. Local 9-1-1 calls are rerouted to local fire departments, and like Chief Kline said, fire chiefs are asked to man their stations.

Baustert sent a two-page reply letter to Chief Kline within a week of his concerns explaining the power glitches, and Commissioner Bob Bower – Armstrong 9-1-1 liason – also reviewed the letter.

“All of this new technology costs money, and all the new technology comes with all of the technology bugs.”

Baustert – a former fire chief himself and a 38-year member of the Apollo Fire Department – said he has received calls from other fire department officials as well and understood their frustrations, while not knowing of any emergency calls missed.

Even though fixed, Baustert requested a complete evaluation to look out for other possible problems.

“The good news is: my dispatchers are now well-versed on how to deal with a power outage. It’s not a surprise to them anymore.”

• 

  By jorn jensen, January 5, 2015 @ 8:55 AM

  Rather than this being a news article, with people writing letters forth and back, all that was necessary was that Mr. Baustert be proactive and contact his ‘customers’ with ‘what was the problem’ and ‘here’s what we’re doing about it’.
• 

  By blutoblutarsky, January 6, 2015 @ 9:27 AM

  Face to face meetings or conference calls typically get quicker and better results than letters or emails.

Other Links to this Post