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New committee to oversee county 911 system
The 911 system overall worked well during the Sept. 14 storm.
LISBON — Columbiana County’s efforts to provide 911 service for cell phones got off to a slow start.
The committee that created the system for land phones by law had to dissolve after its activation Sept. 11.
The new committee, the Columbiana County 911 Emergency Services Commission, will also oversee the entire system and the addition of 911 service for cell phones.
The committee had its first meeting Tuesday, but only three people — including two from the county’s Emergency Management Agency — showed up.
About 19 people are supposed to serve on the committee.
Robert Emmons, the assistant chairman and director of the project, said Commissioner Dan Bing, program chairman, was involved in candidate interviews Tuesday for another public board on which he serves.
Appointees representing the Salem and East Liverpool mayors, the sheriff’s office, the county police chiefs association, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the county firefighters association, three telephone companies and the county trustees association somehow were not notified.
Emmons said calls to new members may not have been completed by the commissioners office.
Under the new committee’s plan, the number of people who show up create a quorum to conduct business, not that there was much of it.
Emmons said the biggest task is the electronic mapping of the county that would allow safety forces to find the location from which a 911 cell call was made.
The county has funds set aside for the work that is expected to take up to nine months to complete. There’s no estimate of when the project would begin.
The good news is that the 911 land-line system worked well.
Emmons said that starting around 7 p.m. Sept. 14, dispatchers received hundred of calls about downed utility lines.
Emmons said safety forces need to be alerted to sparking electrical wires. Without sparking, lines that are just down require a call to the appropriate phone company.
The county has five answering points. When East Palestine lost power, it turned to a backup generator.
“The generator in East Palestine is old and tired,” Emmons said.
The generator is about 30 years old and couldn’t produce enough power to keep full operations going. But the land 911 program was able to route calls to the answering system at the East Palestine Police Department.
Emmons said he’s not sure if the new committee will consider replacing East Palestine’s generator.
The new committee may meet again in November or January.
wilkinson@vindy.com