Dubois County Communications improvement plan started
The Dubois County Council approved advertising for $80,000 to be allocated to begin updates to the county’s communications system.
County Commissioner Larry Vollmer requested the Dubois County Council fund a plan to improve the county’s communications system at the council’s meeting Monday night.
The request comes after Vollmer commissioned a study of the communications system earlier this year based on it failing to activate tornado sirens twice in the past two years.
The most recent occurred in January of this year when a technical problem stopped the siren from sounding in Birdseye during a tornado warning.
The time before that occured February 28, 2011, when dispatchers at the county communications center didn’t notice the alert from the National Weather Service notifying them of a tornado warning. Subsequently, the two dispatchers failed to activate the warning system. A tornado hit Dubois County, damaging several structures near Duff and then causing extensive damage in Celestine, but luckily, no one was seriously injured.
Vollmer contacted Jack Hart, a consultant for Tusa Consulting Services in Kansas City, MO, who completed an extensive study of the county’s communication system and presented his recommendations to the commissioners in October (story here).
A volunteer group composed of county fire chiefs, first responders, and government officials met with Hart during his study and then met after his recommendations were presented to the county.
The volunteer group identified several ideas in Hart’s presentation that the county could pursue immediately to improve communications. Vollmer and Dubois County Assistant Emergency Management Director Gary Fritz presented their recommendations to the council Monday evening.
Those included:
1. The sirens should all be activated on similar “tones” or signals. An upgrade to 13 of the county’s sirens would allow them to be activated with one signal rather than several signals the system currently uses. During a tornado warning, each siren is activated with a special signal and this takes up to two minutes for the dispatchers to activate all the sirens. The signals are sent over the fire and emergency responders’ channel stopping communication from occurring while the sirens are activated. This upgrade could cost about $2,000 per siren, or $26,000 total.
2. Reconfigure the 9-1-1 console for easier operations at a cost of about $250.
3. Add text paging for cellphones to supplement the county paging system. The group asked for $10,000 to be included in the budget to cover any expenses.
4. The big-ticket item was to convert the county to a “Simulcast” paging system. This would activate pages across the county rather than for specific geographic areas. The goal is to allow individuals to hear pages when they are outside of their area. For example, Holland Volunteer Fire Fighters would be able to hear pages for the Holland area when the fire fighter is in Huntingburg or Jasper where they work. Now they are unable to receive those pages if they are outside the area they volunteer in. This will cost about $300,000.
The council approved advertising in a 6-1 vote — Councilwoman Barb Mathies voted against it due to the excessive cost — for $80,000 to be used to begin implementing the changes including hiring a firm to oversee the requests for proposals.
