IV. Communication and Operational Concerns

There was a clear breakdown in communication and understanding during the incident.

The information being relayed by Bruce Dunn was that the Sampson site was going down and that significant capabilities at that site would be lost. To someone without a detailed understanding of the system architecture, statements such as "we are going to lose everything" could reasonably be interpreted to mean that the entire countywide radio system was going offline.

This appears to have contributed to confusion among agency supervisors and dispatch personnel as they attempted to determine how communications would be affected and what contingency measures were necessary.

It is important to distinguish between the loss of the Sampson Tower site and the loss of the countywide 800 MHz radio system. The Sampson site failed; the 800 MHz radio system as a whole did not.

Intermittent Radio Problems

There were reports of intermittent radio problems throughout the evening and early morning hours leading up to the tower failure. Because there is not enough information available at this time to determine the exact cause of each reported issue, I cannot make a definitive determination regarding those problems.

Based on my experience, however, the loss of a tower site can increase the likelihood of receiving a busy "bonk" or otherwise being unable to complete a radio transmission. There are a finite number of communication paths into and out of the system, and multiple users may be attempting to use those paths simultaneously.

The loss of a tower can increase demand on the remaining sites and communication paths. In addition, some of the reported issues may have been related to the Sampson site beginning to fail before the complete loss of the site was recognized. This would be particularly noticeable with portable radios that were unable to establish a connection with a nearby operational tower.

V. Existing Redundancy

There is redundancy available for Fire and EMS notification.

DCECC utilizes additional notification methods, including: