Gilmer 911 Center Hits Power Failure

ELLIJAY, GA – At 10:45 pm Saturday night, June 24, the Gilmer County 911 center experienced rapid power fluctuations coming into the center.

As the power goes out in the 911 center, an automatic back-up kicks in. The “Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)” will automatically sustain the center until a generator can kick on to take control of the system. This system provides maintained service through a power outage.

However, the fluctuations on this system that night failed and returned rapidly inside of one minute. According to Captain Frank Copeland, head of the 911 center, the storms and wind caused the incoming fluctuations to occur more than five times under one minute. The rapid fluctuations forced the UPS into a default mode in order to protect it from surges. Without the UPS, the 911 center went without power for approximately two minutes before the back-up generator returned power to systems.

Operating normally through the remainder of the night, the 911 center encountered another issue at 7:30 am that morning, June 25. Cpt. Copeland stated to FYN that the call center began experiencing issues with incoming calls that would lose connection around 30 seconds into a call. Progressing through their established plans of repair to the phone system, the 911 call center was forced to contact AT&T and Fannin County’s 911 center to begin transferring incoming calls to Fannin.

According to Cpt. Copeland, Fannin County began accepting the calls roughly 20 minutes after operators noticed the issue.

After calling for a technician to inspect the Leibert System UPS, Gilmer began taking calls again just before noon that same day. Cpt. Copeland stated they believe their current phone system is to blame for the issue as they may have had trouble rebooting after the power outage due to the conversion process. AT&T sends all 911 calls to the center digitally, but the 911 centers system is currently set to a hybrid digital/analog system that converts the incoming digital signal to an analog signal for the 911 center.

Copeland also reported that his opinion was the current system’s age could also have been a factor in the issues occurring. However, no issues with phone calls were reported between the power outage and the phone line issue at 7:30 am.

Between the hours of 7:30 am and noon when Gilmer began taking calls again, Cpt. Copeland reported that Fannin took eight calls from Gilmer County with the majority of them being “administrative calls” involving officers reporting in and similar occurrences. He also told FYN that Gilmer did not incur any additional costs due to the transfer as 911 centers often support each other through times like this on a sort of “Mutual Aid” agreement.

Many will recall FYN’s report of the Commissioner’s approval to replace the 911 phone system with a new all digital system. This replacement is set to occur in the first week of July. Cpt. Copeland told FYN that he expects much of the phone line issues to stop with the newer systems installation. However, he called the rapid fluctuations earlier in the night a “highly unusual power failure situation” after consultations with Emerson Network Power out of Norcross.

Stating this is just a situation you can’t prepare for, Cpt. Copeland did tell FYN that Gilmer had recently had the UPS system inspected for maintenance in March and the Generators run auto-checks once a week as well as an on site inspection monthly. In fact, he reported to FYN that no situation with rapid power fluctuations like this has occurred since the call center moved to its current location in 2009.

Stating, “We do have a back-up plan, we implemented that back-up plan, and the community was safe” Cpt. Copeland went on to say he was proud of his crew and their quick implementation of the established back-up plans prepared for these situations like this.