Henry Bailey Jr., The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.)

A lightning strike that knocked out two first-response dispatcher consoles in Hernando didn’t shock DeSoto Emergency 9-1-1 District system managers: Quick action had one console working the next day, and while the other was out for two weeks awaiting new parts and repair, there was never a communications cutoff.

“There was no service interruption — we don’t do well with those,” said Jim Marineau, president of Memphis-based Integrated Communications, the district’s tower operations manager.

He issued a report on a busy September at last week’s meeting of the district commission.

On Sept. 2, Marineau said, the system experienced a lightning blast at the Hernando dispatch site that impacted Console 2 and Console 3, affecting several boards within the central electronics bank. But another console acted as a backup.

Integrated, known in the emergency community as ICI, “had enough spare parts on hand to repair Console 2 and sent in the bad boards for repair,” said Marineau. Console 2 was back at work the day after the bolt hit, he said, while Console 3 was up and running on Sept. 16.

That wasn’t the end of issues for Hernando facilities. During the first part of the week of Sept. 16, Marineau said, there were link problems between the Hernando tower site and the DeSoto dispatch center.

“The Aurora link transmitter, which interfaces the consoles to the microwave system, was intermittently dropping its signal,” he said. “The Aurora was replaced with a spare and the bad unit was sent in for repair.”

It wasn’t all rush and repair in September; there was progress in the follow-up to the issuance by the Federal Communications Commission of three powerful paired frequencies to the district announced at last month’s meeting.

“The construction notice has been filed with the FCC for the new frequencies,” Marineau said. “We should be getting confirmation within the next few weeks.”

The notice will secure the sought-after licenses for the next nine years before having to renew. The 9-1-1 district’s radio committee will study a range of uses for the frequencies, originally viewed as a backup but now possibly the basis for a radio revamp, said commission chairman Bill Dahl of Southaven.

In other action, the panel approved $67,228 in monthly district expenses and on a motion by Commissioner Jerry McCarson of Walls endorsed a 30-day extension of the current annual budget to allow review of incoming maintenance and other data.

“We hope to have a budget to approve by our next meeting,” Dahl said. The blueprint is expected to be in the $1.5 million range for total expenditures.

Also approved were 3 percent cost-of-living raises for district executive director Debby Dunnaway and deputy director James Powell.

The hikes are in line with raises approved for fiscal 2014 by the DeSoto Board of Supervisors for county workers.

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