Pager malfunction slows down firefighters
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The Fire Department's little red pagers appear deceptively archaic attached
to the belts of Campbell County volunteer firefighters.
The pagers are fire-engine red and about the size of a jewelry box. And of
course, few people use a pager since cell phones usurped their roll in the
late 1990s.
These pagers, though, are arguably the backbone of the department's
communication network. They allow dispatchers to alert off-duty firefighters
at any moment and tell them where to go, a necessity for a department that
depends on so few full-time personnel.
So when the Little Wash Boy Laundry caught fire early Saturday morning, and
those little red pagers didn't work, fire department officials knew they had
big problems.
Dispatchers first learned of the Little Wash Boy fire when they got a call
that smoke was coming from the downtown Gillette building at 12:28 a.m. As
is standard procedure, they sent out a page asking volunteer firefighters in
the area to respond to the building.
When firefighters are able to hear their pagers' high-pitched tones alerting
them to an emergency, the system works wonderfully. The Campbell County Fire
Department averages just under six minutes from the time dispatchers learn
about a fire to the time the first unit arrives on scene, said Fire Chief
Gary Scott. That's a year-round, night-and-day, countywide average that
includes the entire spectrum of calls the department gets.
However, a hiccup at the initial call-up compounds delays further down the
line, said David King, Campbell County emergency management coordinator.
Dispatchers take longer to notify firefighters. Firefighters take longer to
get to their trucks. And the trucks take longer to get to the fire.
"Anything that delays your response is a cascading situation, so we needed
to get on it right away," King said.
When dispatchers learned the pager system wasn't working, they were forced
to call Scott at his home. Meanwhile, King heard some suspicious radio
traffic over the scanner he keeps in his bedroom that originated from a
different source than the broken pager system. He raced to the station, as
well.
King pulled up just behind Scott at the fire house, and the two used an
automated telephone notification system to alert the still-sleeping
volunteer firefighters. The phone system's been used to call residents after
the attempted kidnapping in Wright last summer and also to warn nearby
homeowners about upcoming mine blasting. It's not intended for use in
regular fire department emergencies.
King set the system to call every Campbell County firefighter, including
some who were no longer active members.
"I called the whole flippin' department, so the people in Wright even got a
call," King said.
Firefighter James Schultz was at home in bed with his family just before the
phone call came. Schultz, too, had heard radio traffic as he listened to
command officers talk over the radio, but he didn't know what to make of it
since he hadn't heard a call-up.
"Then the phone rings and everyone's wondering what's going on," Schultz
said.
He recalls hearing King's voice over the phone and then rushing down to the
station. While dispatchers using the pager specify where firefighters are
needed and what's happening at that location, he didn't hear any details
about the emergency over the phone message.
Even with firefighters like Schultz trying to make up time as fast as they
could, the first fire unit didn't arrive on scene until 12:52 a.m. - a full
24 minutes after the initial call and four times the department's average
response time.
Technicians now think a new repeater system shut down and caused the pagers
not to work, although they're still not sure why the repeater went down,
Scott said. The pagers were already up and running again, without any help,
while firefighters were still trying to squelch the flames.
As of Saturday evening, techs were still searching for the gremlin that
caused the malfunction.
"The mechanical system failed. It wasn't a failure of the fire department or
the firefighters," Scott said. "We have no idea why it shut down."
Campbell County dispatchers conduct pager tests multiple times a week.
Despite the delay, firefighters were able to contain the blaze and,
eventually, extinguish the fire - but not before the flames caused an
estimated $250,000 damage to the uninsured building.
It's not clear how much of this damage could have been spared had the pager
system been working properly.
What is clear, though, is that the often-overlooked little red boxes, which
play a big part in every fire emergency, were sorely missed early Saturday
morning.
- By JAMES WARDEN, News-Record Writer
Pager malfunction slows down firefighters
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