Dayton Daily News (Ohio)

WARREN COUNTY – An overloaded system and understaffed technicians unfamiliar with how to fix the problem are among the issues that led to Warren County being without 911 services for more than 14 hours following the huge windstorm on June 29, a preliminary report from the county says.

CenturyLink, the operators of the 911 system, is to blame for the lengthy and messy repair to the county’s 911 system, said Paul Kindell, Warren County telecommunications director, in his preliminary report to county commissioners.

For almost a half hour, during the height of the storm, callers to Warren County’s 911 operations “received dead air, with no indication of why their call was not answered,” said Kindell,

Once callers could get through, they found their calls being routed to Geauga County in northeastern Ohio, for at least an hour. Once that problem was corrected, 911 service was still not restored and dispatchers received 911 calls only on regular business lines, which led to myriad problems.

“Dispatchers could not prioritize calls (answer 911 calls before general business calls),” Kindell wrote. “Dispatchers also couldn’t get the caller’s name, telephone number or location [automatically]. Callers that were lost could not be located on the map in disaster mode (a 911 feature that, when lost, can cause long delays in getting help to the caller if they don’t know where they are.) Dispatchers also didn’t know which police or fire agency to send to the caller.”

Kindell said the county’s issues weren’t addressed in a timely or quick manner.

“The technician that responded to our help ticket admitted to us he didn’t start working on 911 issues until 3:30 a.m…. It wasn’t until 8 a.m. that he cleared the 911 circuits and restored services,” Kindell said.

An official from CenturyLink said the company was still investigating the issue and would have more information on the incident next week.

The 911 system in Ohio is operated through two T1 circuit-houses, one located in Mansfield and the other in Lima, that are supposed to automatically transfer 911 calls to the emergency dispatchers closest to the place of the calls’ origin, said Michael Bunner, emergency services director of Warren County. Both of those lines went down during the June 29 storm that saw winds of more than 70 mph and severe thunderstorms across Ohio.

Kindell said that when the 911 system went down, he called CenturyLink but was placed on hold for a lengthy period of time and found himself talking to technicians who were unfamiliar with the rerouting process.

Once he was able to speak to the proper technician, Kindell realized the calls were being directed to Geauga County.

“Imagine the Geauga County dispatcher trying to determine from where our citizen’s calls were originating and how to help,” Kindell said.

Once the problem was realized, the Geauga dispatchers gave callers Warren County’s seven-digit dispatch number or took down the information and relayed it back to Warren County.

The county was also burdened by the “fatal mile,” the one mile of lines where circuits from both T1 circuits overlap as they run into the emergency dispatchers’ offices, Kin-dell said.

“The last mile is where we are most vulnerable and where we seem to always fail,” Kin-dell said. “The cable between the 911 Center and the Lebanon Central office, and the Lebanon Central office itself, are vulnerable points where one problem can take down both circuits.”

Bunner said that officials are looking into the possibility of building a separate circuit router to act as a backup and take away some of the vulnerability of the “fatal mile.”

“The storm affected systems statewide and stretched CenturyLink’s ability to respond to everyone’s problem,” was CenturyLink officials’ response that was written in Kindell’s report. “CenturyLink also had people on vacation that limited their ability to address the work load. They admit they could have done better but with the widespread damage caused by the storm, they felt like they did a good job with the staffing levels they had available.”

Bunner said the public was not notified of the problem because once the rerouting was fixed, his office was swamped with calls.

“We received 800 calls in two hours time,” Bunner said. “We had 11 people working in the center. We had no way of dealing with that and trying to alert the public.”

Bunner said an EMA officer did post a message on Face-book requesting people in trouble call the seven-digit dispatch line instead of 911.

“We are looking at other multimedia ways of getting the message out and other alternative means of communication should the problem happen again,” Bunner said.

Commissioner Tom Ariss said he was disappointed in the issues that occurred, but also felt positive that Kindell and CenturyLink were working together to ensure such actions were not repeated.

County Commissioner Dave Young was less positive about the report, but was hopeful the problem could be fixed.

“I think CenturyLink is on board with us, they know what the issues are and are working to make sure they get fixed,” Ariss said.

“It’s not a situation where we can just change the vendor,” Young said. “The state says this is how 911 works and so we have to follow it. But my position is we need to have a backup in place. If the state says things must be run this way, that’s fine, but we need to make sure they aren’t screwing up. My responsibility is to the people of Warren County.”

No one is believed to have died because of the lack of 911 services, Bunner said.

“We were extremely fortunate their were no injuries or fatalities in Warren County,” Bunner said.

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