Chester County PA 800Mhz Trunked Radio System Crashes For A While

Sat, Feb 26, 2000 
Emergency radio system shuts down 
By Christian Bottorff 
The county's long-troubled 800-Mhz emergency communications system quit working for two and a half hours Friday, leaving a few police departments without a means of receiving dispatches and some officers without a means to talk to one another.
Other police departments had to use older equipment that is supposed to be phased out.
Chester County emergency management officials said a piece of equipment called a "radio master network clock" caused the malfunction. It was giving "erroneous information," resulting in a collapse of the county's 800-Mhz radio network, said Edward Atkins, director of Chester County Emergency Services.
About 20 minutes after the incident, most police departments were using the older equipment for dispatches and communications. 
The radio system was purchased from E.F. Johnson Co. Its officials repaired the problem.
"We're focusing now on making sure we have a good system in place to support the responders and the citizens," Atkins said. "Today was not a pretty day. We're trying to make sure it does not happen again."
Officials from the radio company had little comment following the outage of the $14 million radio system. A representative said late Friday that the company was trying to pinpoint the source of the malfunction.
Atkins said a backup clock, a safety feature, did not operate correctly.
Police from municipal departments such as East Vincent reported that they were without county radio communications during the malfunction because their older equipment has been junked.
Atkins said Harris Corp., a consultant, will start to analyze the radio network next week to see what causes the radio system failures that police chiefs are saying is becoming more frequent.
He said besides the clock problem, there could be other problems. He said radio towers swaying and buildings and trees between towers could all be interrupting line-of-sight transmissions between the county's radio towers.
Atkins said Harris may determine those, as well as other problems have been the source of the county's radio communication system failures.
Commissioner Colin Hanna said he sees the Friday malfunction as a positive turn of events for a system that has been beset since its inception. He said radio personnel have indicated to him the malfunctioned clock could be a source of some past problems. 
"It's possible that this component had been performing erratically in the past, causing some of the otherwise inexplicable problems," Hanna said.
Commissioner Karen Martynick said the system is viable and the county will fix it until it works.
She said she's not sure, however, that the 800-Mhz technology is the right technology for this area. Other municipal, county and state governments that use the technology in the northeast are plagued with similar problems as Chester County. 
"I think that these are issues that may be, in fact, inherent in the 800-Mhz technology," Martynick said. "I'm now doing a search of other communities that have 800-Mhz systems to know whether other communities that have put in that systems have had difficulties." 
So far, she said Wilmington, Del., Trenton, N.J., New York City, Baltimore and Fairfax County, Va., have all had similar problems. 
The old system is not an alternative, she said.
"We could not have restored the old system. It was beyond restoration. It could not be counted on to work in the long term," she said.
She said the county purchased the 800-Mhz equipment partly from suggestions made by the federal Emergency Management Agency and a similar state agency.
Commissioner Andrew Dinniman was not available for comment, although in the past he has said he agreed that commissioners are committed to making the system work, despite the cost.
BACK TO TOP
See All FrontPage Stories
Local News |