Article on insidetowers.com
Chemung County in largely rural southern central New York grappled with faulty emergency radio communications over the Memorial Day weekend. Although the mobile radios and phones continued to work, 911 operators were unable to use the radio equipment at their desks.
The provider of the emergency radio equipment, Motorola, responded to Chemung County’s call for assistance and attempted to figure out the source of the problem. As Yahoo News reports, a battery problem at a local radio tower was determined to be the culprit.
“I had Motorola come in; they did big research into the investigation on why this happened,” reported Undersheriff Douglas Houper. “They believe there was an outage at Hawley Hill. Everything in the shelter up there has a battery backup that keeps everything alive until the generator starts, supposedly. What they determined is, ‘hey, it’s time for you to replace these batteries.’ I said, ‘ok, if that’s what needs to be done, we’re going to do that.’ So, we’re in the process right now, an emergency order, we’re going to get Hawley Hill taken care of first. We’re hoping this will alleviate this issue.”
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