Power surge causes move of W. Va. 911 center

By Andrew Clevenger
Charleston Gazette

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KANAWHA COUNTY, W. Va. — Last week, Kanawha County officials practiced moving Metro 911's operations to a secondary Public Safety Answering Point, a backup site where 911 calls are handled if something catastrophic happens at the Ned Chilton Metro 911 call center.

On Monday, the backup facility was put to the test - and it wasn't a drill.

A freak power outage at the Metro 911 center at Southridge forced county officials to move their emergency operations, including the fielding of 911 calls and communications for police, fire and ambulance services, to the backup location for almost two hours.

At about 11:30 a.m., computers in the command center suddenly went black, said Metro 911 Director Carolyn Charnock.

"Dispatchers reported hearing a pop, and our security cameras actually shook," she said.

Within moments, the supervisor began transferring operations to the backup facility, located within another county agency.

County agencies that use the communications system all chipped in, she said. Members of the Kanawha County Sheriff's Department and Charleston Police Department escorted dispatchers to the new location, and dispatchers with the Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority fielded calls until the Metro 911 dispatchers were up and running, she said.

"Units kept traffic on the radio to essential emergency traffic, understanding that we were working under difficult circumstances," she said.

The cause of the outage was not known on Monday, but Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said he thinks it was a significant power surge. The surge might have caused the facility's uninterrupted power system to trip a number of breakers, cutting power to vital parts of the building.

The center has backup generators and surge protectors, but none of the safeguards in place prevented the outage.

"We're supposed to have all kinds of redundant backups," Carper said. "We'll look into that."

Charnock said no calls were lost because of the outage and relocation.

"The real-live test of our backup system worked flawlessly," she said.

After power was restored and the communications systems were rebooted one at a time, calls were transferred back to the call center.

One of the Chilton 911 Center's neighbors reported a similar surge, Carper said, but the incident appeared to be localized.

"The good news is it happened in good weather," Carper said.

The centralized 911 emergency system is normally efficient and effective, and Monday's outage stressed the importance of having a backup plan ready to spring into action if needed, he said.

"The beauty of the 911 system is it works 99.99 percent perfectly," he said, "but when it fails, all the eggs are in one basket."