Dagley Reeves, AA7HB published the following account to the Rim Country Amateur Radio Club:
As I am sure you're all aware, the local area including Forest Lakes, Heber, and Overgaard were affected yesterday by a mass communications outage. Landline, cell phone, and Internet were out of service for a good part of the afternoon and evening. It is still a matter of conjecture, but the 911 system may have also been affected. The fire department's repeater also appears to be out of service. The W7RIM emergency operations center was activated at the request of the chief of the fire department and status was raised to DEFCON 2. Dagley went over to the fire station and activated the public service radio for use by the fire department. The club's VHF UHF radio was also activated and a listening watch was maintained on various repeater frequencies. The main concern was the fire department being able to receive emergency calls from his dispatch station located in Show Low. A workaround was obtained by dispatching one of the firemen to an area with cell phone coverage and radio contact with the fire station through their car to car frequency. 911 calls were delivered to this firemen on his cell phone whereupon he relayed that information to the fire station using the car to car frequency. While this was not an optimum solution, it seemed to work. Dagley was able to contact John in Forest Lakes who was having similar difficulties. The Flagstaff EOC was activated and relayed 911 calls to Forest Lakes via one of their repeaters on Mount Eldon. After some fiddling around with the VHF antenna rotator, Dagley was able to communicate with both John and Flagstaff EOC. clearly. At first blush, I have to say that the Coconino County office of emergency management stepped up to the plate whereas the Navajo County office of emergency management was never heard from. While the situation was handled appropriately, I kind of felt like a small tick on the dog when it came to getting any sort of information out of Navajo County. We have a lot to talk about at the next meeting! No verifiable information is available regarding what caused the outage although rumor has it that it was cut in the fiber optics cable somewhere between the 277 spur and Paper Mill Road. Service was restored sometime last night and EOC status has been lowered to DEFCON 3.
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AuthorBlog Posts are by John Nelson, N7MLS Archives
August 2020
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