Agenda - 04-06-1987 - Laserfiche WebLink

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AIN TO: Orange County Board of Commissioners FROM: Technical Review Task Force - Telephone Richard A. Helwig, Chair DATE: Monday, April 6, 1987 ABSTRACT: All telephone service, including 911, in the 732 exchange service area was out Friday, 4/3/87 from approximately 6:15pm to 9:30pm. We recommend filing a complaint with the North Carolina Utilities Commission that asks for a formal investigation of the -facts of, this event and raises strong questions of the adequacy of Centel's emergency plans, especially its time lines for response to such emergency situations. Our concern is not that this specific failure occurred, but with the apparent inadequacy of the company's emergency action plan. The Telephone Technical Review Task Force unanimously, by poll of membership, submits this report and recommendation to you on the failure- .of the 732 telephone exchange on 4/3/87, Centel 's apparent inability to readh- local repair personnel, the lack of status information from Centel 's trouble center in Hickory, and the compromise of the County's emergency communications plan. Briefly, the best information we have sets "the following events:. The exchange failed completely, including 911, at approximately 6:15 pm. County Emergency Communications Director, Bobby Baker reported the failure to Centel 's trouble center in Hickory at about 6:30 m. of the failure, although we believe Hickory has responsibilityyfors unaware monitoring and remotely controlling the Hillsborough office. ) Centel _ personnel from Roxboro are the first to arrive at the King Street office ; t about 7:45pm (1 1/2hrs) and with guidance from Hickory over the only working line (FX) in the office tried unsuccessfully to get the system going. Local Centel personnel arrived at 9:OOpm (2 3/4hrs) and by resetting the CPU power converters got the system up by 9:15pm and completely operational by 9:30pm (3 1/4hrs) , albeit on one of the two CPUs. Mr. Baker says that it takes 30 mins to get the county 's emergency communication plan operational, and that he usually can get information of expected down time to trigger our plan into action. No such information was made available by Centel 's Hickory personnel even though requested. We understand that local Centel personnel have no means other than telephone to call them in to respond to, emergencies and other problems. Once the proper personnel arrived the.. system was up within 15 minutes and operation within 30 minutes. It took 2 1/2 hrs to get the proper personnel on site. To have a plan that relies only on the telephone to call the telephone system repairman, raises serious questions about the adequacy, or even existence, of a responsible preparedness plan . Our Sheriff, Lindy Pendergrass, says that we are just lucky that we had no emergency situations during that time. This Task Force suggests to you that, once again, civil trust in Centel 's operation has been abridged by the apparent lack of a plan that effectively deals with telephone system failure in a timely manner. Failures occur, r J