Mayes County 911 Telephone Outage!

[peterjmag]

911 Telephone Outage Emergency
OKC097-240000-

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
911 TELEPHONE OUTAGE EMERGENCY
RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TULSA OK
354 PM CDT MON OCT 23 2006

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE
MAYES COUNTY OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT.

A TELEPHONE OUTAGE HAS BEEN REPORTED IN PARTS OF MAYES COUNTY.
THIS IS AFFECTING 911 SERVICE FOR THE COMMUNITIES OF LOCUST
GROVE...SALINA AND SPAVINAW. IF YOU DONT HAVE HOME TELEPHONE
SERVICE AND ARE IN NEED OF EMERGENCY SERVICES...USE YOUR CELL
PHONE TO CALL 911. IF YOU DONT HAVE CELL PHONE SERVICE...USE
FAMILY SERVICES RADIO TUNED TO CHANNEL 1. PUBLIC SAFETY
OFFICIALS WILL BE MONITORING THIS CHANNEL.

 

[freqscout]

Interesting use of FRS 1...The range on that is pretty bad if from a handheld radio. I hope that there is some sort of base receiver or something that they could be heard calling on, otherwise you don't get much more than a mile or so line of sight whch isn't much when you are calling across a county.

 

[CommShrek]

So does anyone have a follow up to this incident?

 

[car2back]

I can't remember what time it came through, but I saw an OLETS broadcast last night that they were back up and running

The FRS radio thing is a pretty neat idea, but like Freqscout said, I can't imagine it would work very well, if at all. I'd be suprised if they got any calls on it.

 

[KD5WLX]

There's been quite a bit of discussion on the CERTComm reflector about this - it's some guys idea of a 'new' Channel 9 or something. Problem, 1/2 the radios out there are GMRS/FRS dual use, and channel 1 is a shared channel - meaning the GMRS users transmit at higher power and you always hear them and never the FRS if they double. To make matters worse, despite the clear wording in the instruction manuals, 90% of GMRS radios sold are never licensed. That doesn't matter if they're never turned on.....

In a real catastrophe, 90 bajillion users all on one freq, no radio discipline, and all doubling all over each other, all talking to their neighbors who are in the same fix, and none of them with enough range to get anyone who could actually help.