PORT HADLOCK — An unplanned outage last week proved to be a test run of a partnership developing between emergency dispatchers in Jefferson and Clallam counties — and it was reportedly seamless.
The main server for Jefferson Communications, or JeffCom — a 9-1-1 dispatch center that serves East Jefferson County — was down for 18 hours beginning last Wednesday, said Janet Silvus, who took over a year ago as director of the center, which is based in Port Hadlock.
“While the cause of the outage was being fixed, incoming 9-1-1 calls were successfully rerouted to their counterpart dispatch center in Port Angeles, Peninsula Communications, or PenCom,” Silvus said in a statement released Friday.
Silvus and Steve Romberg, PenCom manager, have been working to develop a “robust system” that would provide “inter-operability capability” between the two organizations on the North Olympic Peninsula, Silvus said.
During the outage, “PenCom dispatchers were able to receive incoming calls from Jefferson County callers and communicate with our JeffCom dispatchers through an intercom connection set up between the two centers,” Silvus said.
“We then resorted to the old pen and paper to dispatch local emergency responders”
Silvus said that once the partnership is complete, the two computer-aided dispatch — or CAD — systems will be integrated “to make this process much more efficient and accurate.
“In the meantime, though, this proved to be an excellent test run for what we’ve completed so far.”
The CAD transfer is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
“Then we begin working on the final piece, which will be establishing inter-operability between our radio systems,” Silvus said.
Wednesday’s outage began with the loss of the CAD system and Internet and email service at about 10 a.m.
By about 2 p.m., the 9-1-1 lines were showing signs of failure, Silvus said.
She directed service provider Century Link to begin rerouting calls to PenCom, which took calls until JeffCom regained power to the server at about 4 a.m. Thursday.
The cause of the outage was a network card failure on the main blade server for the center, according to an IBM service technician, Silvus said.
Romberg said that the integrated system, when complete, will provide a level of redundancy “which is critical for both organizations and the citizens we serve.”
“Responders and citizens are always our top priority, and if we have to erase the county boundary lines during an emergency, then we have to become inter-operable,” he said in the statement.
As an example, he told of PenCom dispatchers receiving a emergency call about a person who had collapsed in Jefferson County at
11:03 p.m. Wednesday.
The Clallam County dispatchers relayed that information to their counterparts in Jefferson County while providing the caller with instructions on performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
JeffCom dispatchers put the call out over the radio and aid arrived on the scene eight minutes later.
The ill person was reported to be breathing while being transported to the hospital.