Elizabeth Evans, The York Dispatch (Pennsylvania)

Fire chiefs around York County were left scrambling Wednesday when the York County 911 Center’s paging system temporarily stopped working.

Several fire chiefs said they were not 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 chiefs said.

“The only other way to notify personnel (quickly) is through radios, and our volunteers don’t carry radios,” Nichols said.

Nichols said it’s his understanding the system was rendered inoperable for scheduled maintenance.

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

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 Everbridge notification system to alert emergency responders of the paging system’s failure, Lindquist said.

But several fire chiefs told The York Dispatch they didn’t receive that backup notification.

Notified? Lindquist said the Everbridge alert was successful, and he doesn’t know why some officials wouldn’t have received it. He also said he was unaware of any prior complaints from fire chiefs that they weren’t notified of previous outages caused by scheduled maintenance.

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

But both Nichols and Chief Joe Stevens of Manchester Borough’s Union Fire Engine Co. No. 1 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 was listening to his county radio Wednesday and heard someone complain pagers weren’t working. That’s when Stevens realized out the system was down.

“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 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, too, 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.

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