Fire chiefs scramble after 911 paging system fails

Jan. 05--Fire chiefs around York County were left scrambling Wednesday when the York County 911 Center's paging system stopped working for 93 minutes..

Several fire chiefs said they were not immediately alerted to the problem, as they are supposed to be.

"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 only other way to notify personnel (quickly) is through radios, and our volunteers don't carry radios," Nichols said.

He said it was his understanding the system was rendered inoperable for scheduled maintenance.

System failed: But Carl Lindquist, spokesman for York County, said the paging system failed. It was down from 1:42 p.m. to 3:15 p.m.

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 backup Everbridge phone-notification system to alert emergency responders of the paging system's failure, Lindquist said.

Chief Joe Stevens of Manchester's Union Fire Engine Co. No. 1 said he didn't receive that backup notification.

Notified? Lindquist said the Everbridge alert was successful, and he doesn't know why some officials might not have received it. He also said he's unaware of prior complaints that fire chiefs weren't notified of previous maintenance outages.

"Every time there is a planned outage, people are notified in advance," Lindquist said.

But both Nichols and Stevens 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 realized the system was down because he was listening to his radio.

"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 for 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 also 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 levans@yorkdispatch.com, 505-5429 or twitter.com/ydcrimetime.

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