While multiple efforts were being made last spring to ensure emergency dispatchers weren’t knocked off the air, an unexpected discovery was made.
The Bartholomew County E911 Emergency Operations Center found out their backup emergency dispatch system was malfunctioning.
The problem was at a transmission tower located off Carr Hill Road that is used as a secondary or backup communications system with first responders, center deputy director Julie Pierce said. However, that same tower serves as the primary communications system for the Bartholomew County Jail.
In addition, Columbus Regional Hospital, the city of Columbus and the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. also utilize the Carr Hill tower for communications. For that service, each entity pays $15,171 annually.
It was as preparations were underway to ensure all emergency operations were working prior to April’s solar eclipse that a problem was first noticed, the deputy director said.
“We had noticed some things happening, such as getting busy signals while we were using the system,” Pierce said.
In response, center officials sent technicians from ERS Wireless to troubleshoot the problem.
“We’ve had them out a few times to check and see what was going on,” Pierce said. “But they did a complete inspection and found out the issues.”
The malfunction turned out to be a repeater that was not working, she said. Repeaters are used to boost signals to increase the distance between the sender and the receiver.
“We want to make sure this is up and running in case of an emergency, which we do have quite often,” she said.
One recent emergency took place on July 1, 2023. After a direct lightning strike, half of the 911 system was knocked out of commission, while half of the emergency dispatch phones no longer worked, center director Todd Noblitt said. It took months to complete all of the repairs, Noblitt said.
Before that incident occurred, Noblitt said the center or tower has been damaged at least five times by lightning.
Since a number of entities pay to use that tower, the center could not wait to go through a bidding process to start repairs. Officials said $3,000 was spent with ERS Wireless to replace one of the power supplies to a repeater, while a spare power supply was obtained for $2,500.
An additional $1,000 was invested in reprogramming the only paging system in Columbus to voice use, which brought the total for repairs to $6,500. The funds came from the E911 Repair and Maintenance budget, Pierce said.
Since some new parts are still on order, the repairs are not yet completed, she said.
