Fire chiefs around York County (PA) were left scrambling again today when the York
County 911 Center’s alpha paging system temporarily stopped working. Several fire
chiefs said they were not alerted to the problem, as they are supposed to be.
Several years ago they – unfortunately- stopped using tone and voice dispatch alerting.
“This isn’t the first time they’ve (failed to notify us),” West Manchester
Township Fire Chief Dave Nichols said during the outage. “We’re scrambling now
to try to find people to man the station. The county is supposed to notify us
ahead of time so we can make arrangements.”
Fire officials, especially at
volunteer fire companies, rely on the county’s paging system to notify
firefighters, paramedics and ambulance crews about incidents they need to
respond to, the chiefs said. “The only other way to notify personnel
(quickly) is through radios, and our volunteers don’t carry radios,” Nichols
said. Nichols said it’s his understanding the system was rendered inoperable
for scheduled maintenance.
System failed: But Carl Lindquist, spokesman for
York County, said the paging system failed. The system was down from 1:42 p.m.
to 3:15 p.m., he said.
A component within the system’s main computer failed,
according to Lindquist. There is a backup system designed to automatically
recognize the failure and take over, but the backup failed as well, he said.
“It’s an unacceptable outage and we worked as quickly as possible to get it
(fixed),” he said. “The outage didn’t affect any emergency-response (times).”
The five or six fire calls 911 handled during the outage were dispatched as
quickly as they would have been through the paging system, he said.
At 2:15
p.m., the 911 Center used its Everbridge notification system to alert emergency
responders of the paging system’s failure, Lindquist said.But several fire
chiefs told The York Dispatch Newspaper they didn’t receive that backup notification.
Notified? Lindquist said the Everbridge alert was successful, and he doesn’t
know why some officials wouldn’t have received it. He also said he was unaware
of any prior complaints from fire chiefs that they weren’t notified of previous
outages caused by scheduled maintenance.”Every time there is a planned
outage, people are notified in advance,” Lindquist said. But both Nichols
and Chief Joe Stevens of Manchester Borough’s Union Fire Engine Co. No. 1 said
they haven’t been notified of scheduled paging-system outages in the past.
“We either stumble onto it ourselves or hear someone on the radio saying
there’s a problem,” Stevens said. “It’s very frustrating.” Nichols said it’s
happened four or five times.
What chiefs say: Both said they’ve previously
spoken with county officials about the problem. “We don’t get answers — we
get pooh-poohed,” Stevens said. “The county has done nothing about it.”
Like
Nichols, Stevens said he has no other quick way to alert his firefighters,
because only company fire officers and fire police officers are issued radios.
“I sent out a general text and email to let our people know the system is
down,” Stevens said. “And we have a few people on station, in case there’s a
fire.”
Stevens said he was listening to his county radio Wednesday and heard
someone complain pagers weren’t working. That’s when Stevens realized out the
system was down. “It was down a good half-hour or so before I became aware
of it,” he said. “I figured it out on my own. But if it’s 3 o’clock in the
morning, I’m generally not listening to my radio.”
York City: Assistant Fire
Chief Edwin Hamilton said the failure was less of a problem for York City than
other companies, in part because city firefighters carry radios, he said.
York City Fire Chief Steve Buffington was on vacation Wednesday, but heard
about the problem. “The effect on the city is fairly minimal because we have
career people in the stations 24/7, so we can be contacted,” he said. “I do
understand there was some type of glitch with getting notification out as
quickly as it could have been. That’s troubling, if that’s the case. I’m going
to look into it (Thursday).”
Dover Township Fire Capt. Brian Widmayer said
he, too, is aware of instances in which fire officials weren’t warned of
scheduled paging-system maintenance.
Because Dover Township’s station is
staffed daily by six or seven firefighters, Wednesday’s outage was not really a
problem there, he said.
— Reach Elizabeth Evans at [email protected],
505-5429 or twitter.com/ydcrimetime.
