Logan County emergency call system protected by backup/rollover during telephone outages

 

[July 09, 2019] 

LINCOLN 

On Wednesday, July 3, Emergency Management Agency/911 Director/Sheriff Mark Landers held a press conference to discuss several incidences affecting 911 since May 31.

Director Landers said none of these incidences were due to any issues within our 911 Dispatch Center. Problems have occurred three to five times recently due to Frontier bringing new fiber optic lines into the county.

On July 1, Landers said a problem happened in another county due to a fiber optic cut in another county and it was not Frontier’s issue but was caused by a contractor and it affected multiple jurisdictions. Several counties being affected means it is a major issue.

Those 911 trunk lines are what feed the county, so Landers said when Frontier goes down, there is the choke point that kept the 911 calls from coming in. Frontier handles all incoming land lines to Logan County.

Landers said what the system is designed to do is to have a backup. Currently, Dewitt County is utilized as that backup. When a problem like this one occurs, the 911 calls will roll over to another dispatch center and their center can dispatch emergency services, fire or police. Logan County Dispatch also has a backup system here in Logan County, so Dewitt County is the tertiary backup.

It appears no calls were missed when the problem occurred. Landers said the fear is that calls could be missed if not for the multiple backups.

Frontier and Illinois State Police are also aware of the issues and working to rectify it, but Landers said contractors cutting into fiber optics is not something normal or something you can prepare for.

Regarding the other outages that have happened, Landers said they are investigating to see if it is a maintenance issue.

Frontier’s issues otherwise are being dealt with, and Landers said Frontier is working to figure out what has caused some of the issues.

Our county’s system worked as it should have, and Landers said there would have been a minimal delay if calls had gone to Dewitt County. Landers said the system is designed as a fail-safe. Since the backup center relies on the same lines as the primary one, if you lose one, you lose both. Therefore, it is important to have multiple backups available.

When the lines go down for the 911 system, it automatically goes to the backup center. Landers will investigate the primary backup, which he said all counties have. If Dewitt County and Logan County both go down, Landers said he has found out calls could be routed to a non-emergency landline. Landers is having the tech people talk to Frontier about possibly creating that.

Landers said having a non-emergency number would not do any good for someone on the highway, so he would prefer that when anyone calls 911, the call could roll over to that number.

Other companies use backup centers in different states, but Landers said he does not want to do that. His goal is to have a third layer, so one option Landers is exploring is a Voice Over Internet Protocol phone line not attached to the fiber optic land line.

Landers is working to keep these problems from reoccurring. With the restructuring of EMA, 911 and ETSB, the agencies are all now under the Sheriff’s Office for continuity. He said key people like Cheryl Hedrick and Kendall Caruthers in the Emergency Management Office, Dispatch Supervisor Becky Langley, in addition to the dispatchers, have been helpful during these situations.

[Angela Reiners]