Orange Co. lost paging capabilities

[201/65 94]

Me and a few guys were sittin around @ our fire house this mornign just after midnight and one of us realized that our fire horn had been sounded as if there was an alarm, yet no ones pager had gone off. So i go out to my car to get my gear figuring our pagers didnt go off and my phone rings, its my brother asking what the alarm was because his pager hadn't tripped either, so as i hang up with him a few others arrive @ the fire house and they say the same. So we go in to our radio room and landlined 36 Control, apparently something was struck by lightning and they had no way to page out departments out side the range of the tower @ the 911 center. So they pressed the button that sounded every horn/siren in the county and those who no longer use a horn/siren were duty paged by a local department. The low band worked fine so the plan was to have every station manned in the county to dispatch its own calls. Then they decided that they were going to use one centalized department per battalion who had capabilities to tone out the rest of the battalion. I think for as unprepared as everyone was it went kinda smoothly. The only thing is EMS paging was down also, and i was the EMT on the midnight-6am duty crew for my VAC and me nor ne one else on my crew was notified. I guess its a good thing that alot of departments around here still have active horn/sirens as warning devices.

Apparently now everything should be working right now, didnt hear any test pages done tho.

Edited July 19, 2006 by 201/65

[IzzyEng4 427]

It's a horrible feeling when you loose service. Same thing happen to my old dispatch center I worked at with the area departments it served. Only two town that were a control system (radio to radio) were able to work since the other towers were attached to phone lines. When the phon trunk line went out, we had no communications to our dispatch center. Gotto have some sort of back up plan in place.

[RWC130 594]

911 Center FAILURE? Say It Ain't So!!

[Guest]

yeah our horn goes off on its on every now and then so there was only myswlf and one other guy that showed up. we have some major electrical issues in our firehouse..

[trauma74 111]

I am a BIG critic of the Orange County Emergency Communications Center. I have come out against them in the papers and at meetings. The main problem with the 911 Center is that they use NYCOMCO as their vendor. The county does not have a radio systems coordinator or anyone who dictates to NYCOMCO what is good for the county and what the county needs. They let Charlie Ascher and other NYCOMCO employees dictate for them. That is why everything is all screwed up there!

[Guest]

interesting, Putnam uses NYCOMCO as well...

[JetPhoto 626]

redundancy redundancy redundancy!

Always have a back up, and a back up to that too.

Look at Dutchess's system, very few radio problems.

Yea I know there are dead spots, unless you remove all the mountains and have nothing but flat land there will always be dead spots.

My personal opinion is Orange County should have one radio system, not the mess they have now. You have departments using low band, VHF, UHF or 800 trunking. It is a communications nightmare!

Regardless if you go with NYCOMCO, Mid-Hudson Comm. Metro-com or whoever else, they will sell you what they have. Unless you have someone in charge of the whole county and say this is how it's done, you will have a poor communications network.

[JetPhoto 626]

redundancy redundancy redundancy!

Always have a back up, and a back up to that too.

Look at Dutchess's system, very few radio problems.

Yea I know there are dead spots, unless you remove all the mountains and have nothing but flat land there will always be dead spots.

My personal opinion is Orange County should have one radio system, not the mess they have now. You have departments using low band, VHF, UHF or 800 trunking. It is a communications nightmare!

Regardless if you go with NYCOMCO, Mid-Hudson Comm. Metro-com or whoever else, they will sell you what they have. Unless you have someone in charge of the whole county and say this is how it's done, you will have a poor communications network.

[TRUCK6018 50]

Look at Dutchess's system, very few radio problems.

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I could be wrong but isn't Dutchess the exception to the "norm"? It is my understanding that the Dutchess system is used as a model as far the way radio systems should be.

[Remember585 815]

redundancy  redundancy  redundancy!

Always have a back up, and a back up to that too.

Look at Dutchess's system, very few radio problems.

Yea I know there are dead spots, unless you remove all the mountains and have nothing but flat land there will always be dead spots.

My personal opinion is Orange County should have one radio system, not the mess they have now. You have departments using low band, VHF, UHF or 800 trunking. It is a communications nightmare!

Regardless if you go with NYCOMCO, Mid-Hudson Comm. Metro-com or whoever else, they will sell you what they have. Unless you have someone in charge of the whole county and say this is how it's done, you will have a poor communications network.

←

The double posting - intentional? LOL