Berkeley County, WV buys security system to prevent communications going offline

[Thunderbolt]

MARTINSBURG, W.VA — What chaos could have happened, did not. But the approximately 90 minutes that Berkeley County emergency responders worked without their digital radio communication system earlier this month was scary enough.

West Virginia: County buys security system to prevent communications going offline

 

[NeFire242]

Ha. What a waste. So they're going to use this system to be a backup to the system that is already suppose to tell them the tower site is offline. If the backup power didn't work, what makes them think this thing is going to have power and work at the site too? Plus shouldn't their main concern be keeping the site online and preventing this in the future and having better backup power rather than installing an alarm? lol

 

[Thayne]

Murphys law always comes thru, sometimes bureaucrats don't realize less can be more.

The best thing is to be sure your backup system works by testing it at least weekly and making someone really responsible for it including making sure the fuel supply is sufficient and the stuff is serviced regularly. Even then, something can always go wrong. I had one fail once because a block heater hose ruptured and yet it showed no sign of being bad until it split, but running for 15 hours straight caused Murphy to enter the picture--

 

[CCHLLM]

There should be some form of UPS standby backed up by a generator to keep the system up included in every installation, and if there wasn't, who the hell was asleep at the switch on that one? Bean counters and ignorant politics involved maybe? If there was at least a UPS in place, I really don't understand why the system itself didn't immediately tell them it was on standby or emergency power unless that feature in the system was disabled or never enabled or deleted in the buildout process. There are alarm devices built into the systems that alert the comm center over the air of whatever problems are recognized by the programming. If they didn't have some form of UPS, then there wouldn't have been any warning from the system when the power went out.

Geez, would be nice to know the whole story there. Otherwise all we have is a bunch of uninformed conjecture based on the media's usual misinformation and complete ignorance of the subject.

 

[vabiro]

There should be some form of UPS standby backed up by a generator to keep the system up included in every installation, and if there wasn't, who the hell was asleep at the switch on that one?

I got the impression from the story that the UPS failed too.

There are a lot of UPS installs and remote sites that don't have proper maintainance, or an "out of band" warning system. I think a great deal was learned about the importance and best practices for UPSs in the Blackout of '03.

Far too many organisations were depending on UPS and generators that were only useful for hours or a day. When the cellular networks were dieing off in less than 24 hours it really left a lot of organisations SOL.

Victor

 

[kb2vxa]

I don't see what you're hung up on, a trouble alarm is ESSENTIAL to backup systems if something goes wrong and often does. Should the mains supply fail an alarm should be sent to indicate trouble in addition to the Diesel generator kicking in. Another alarm should be sent should the genset fail and the system falls back on battery power. Lastly another alarm should be sent indicating the state of the battery bank, everything all down the line should report it's status.

This has been standard telco practice from the start but practice is not perfect. I remember a cascade failure that occurred over several days that went unreported and finally resulted in a widespread outage of telephone and 911 service in northern NJ a few years ago. Go ahead and laugh, it was traced to a little itty bitty fuse that blew and nobody knew until the whole switching center crashed. Oh, the genset ran out of fuel and nobody knew anything until the battery died, stupid fuse. (;->)

 

[vabiro]

I don't see what you're hung up on, a trouble alarm is ESSENTIAL to backup systems if something goes wrong and often does. Should the mains supply fail an alarm should be sent to indicate trouble in addition to the Diesel generator kicking in. Another alarm should be sent should the genset fail and the system falls back on battery power. Lastly another alarm should be sent indicating the state of the battery bank, everything all down the line should report it's status.

This has been standard telco practice from the start but practice is not perfect. I remember a cascade failure that occurred over several days that went unreported and finally resulted in a widespread outage of telephone and 911 service in northern NJ a few years ago. Go ahead and laugh, it was traced to a little itty bitty fuse that blew and nobody knew until the whole switching center crashed. Oh, the genset ran out of fuel and nobody knew, stupid fuse. (;->)

I completely agree. There are too many network managers - telco and wireless - that have a Laissez-faire atitude towards site maintainance.

Notifications are only the tip of the ice berg. Proper battery maintainance, generator maintainance, fuel maintainance, and a monitoring regiment are all significantly under appreciated elements of running a group of sites. This needs to be someones full-time job in some larger networks.

For example, on another thread it was mentioned that the new state-wide PA system has more than 1100 sites. That is a lot of UPS, generators and notification testing.

Victor

 

[CCHLLM]

Over the course of almost 40 years in the two-way business I was involved in the replacement of all the batteries and the power supplies/chargers in a lot more than one backup system. Seems that "out of sight, out of mind" is the swan song of many battery backups. Imagine that.....

All of the MotherMoto trunked radio sites I've seen have a MOSCAD system in place to do that monitoring thing that the royal ranks don't seem to regard as important. If that also isn't looked after as required, then yes, it too will fail to do its thing when the power goes puke. But then, the expense of maintaining something like that isn't as important as pretty cars, macho uniforms and promotions......

 

[kb2vxa]

"But then, the expense of maintaining something like that isn't as important as pretty cars, macho uniforms and promotions."

Funny you should mention that, ever notice that Eric Estrada (Ponch) was the only CHiP with a custom tailored uniform? Ever notice the radios were Motorola? These days he's fat as a balloon and selling swamp land in Florida, there must be a connection here somewhere. (;->)

 

[Thayne]

"But then, the expense of maintaining something like that isn't as important as pretty cars, macho uniforms and promotions."

Funny you should mention that, ever notice that Eric Estrada (Ponch) was the only CHiP with a custom tailored uniform? Ever notice the radios were Motorola? These days he's fat as a balloon and selling swamp land in Florida, there must be a connection here somewhere. (;->)

Warren, you have just described Human nature, (in a circuituous way)

Another way that works that I remember, is how the powers that be ALWAYS will chew your ass when the juice goes off, but never say boo when it works as intended.
Of course, that is because they are too busy chasing the new office girl or deciding where to go to lunch, or in a meeting stroking each others' egos---

 

[CCHLLM]

Once upon a time there was a radio system that didn't work as advertised. After several months of finger pointing and arguing among the politicians, local officials, vendors, contractors and subcontractors, a public hearing was called.

The gathering drew a good sized crowd and the public officials had a hard time keeping order as the frustrations and accusations between the contract participants flew around the room. Finally, after several minutes of heated debate and shouting at each other, order was restored.

The chairperson looked around the room and spotted the building's custodian standing over by the doorway, and in that moment of calm, asked, "Well, Mr. Gordon, you're the only one in here who has displayed any sign of common sense and decorum. What say you about this fracas?"

Mr. Gordon slowly looked out over the crowd and turned back to the chairperson and said,"Well, Mr. Wilson, my Momma always told me that when you detect the odor of feces, ya oughta check yer own britches before ya start pointin' fingers."