By Matthew Higbee
Connecticut Post Online (Bridgeport, Connecticut)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
DERBY, Conn. — Before many people were even awake Saturday morning, fire and ambulance volunteers throughout the Valley responded to a technical emergency. A telephone system failure, blamed on an AT&T switch located in Derby, knocked out the Valley’s emergency communications at 5 a.m. and left some Derby residents without a dial tone.
No life-and-death calls were affected by the episode, which lasted about two hours until AT&T repaired the switch, according to officials. To deal with the failure, fire, police, and ambulance departments in Derby, Seymour, Ansonia, and Shelton collaborated across city lines and through the Valley’s 911 dispatch service -- New Haven-based Central Medical Emergency Dispatch -- to establish back-up communications.
“There was adequate protection in the Valley within 20 or 30 minutes,” C-MED Director John Gustavson said. “It speaks well that we reacted well.” Investigations into what went wrong are under way at the Office of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications and AT&T. “We don’t know the full scope of the problem and we’re not clear on the impact on 911. We take this very seriously,” said Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesman. The downed switch caused a host of problems. It interrupted C-MED’S ability to dispatch fire and ambulance companies in the Valley and disconnected its direct lines to Griffin Hospital and Derby and Ansonia police, Gustavson said. Radio systems used by the Shelton, Derby, Seymour and Ansonia fire departments and the Derby EMS also went down because they have components that use telephone lines, officials said.
“We still don’t know the total extent of the outage,” Gustavson said.
He added that it was the fourth such failure in 30 years, the last on Jan. 27, 1991, during the New York Giants-Buffalo Bills Superbowl.
While C-MED lost its dispatching ability to the Valley, residents in every community but Derby were still able to dial 911 and reach their local police departments, which could dispatch fire and ambulance departments if needed, officials said. Shelton, Seymour, and Ansonia officials said the transition was relatively seamless.
As the only municipality to report losing 911 service, Derby had to cobble together a more elaborate backup system with the help of Ansonia. AT&T patched Derby 911 calls to the Ansonia Police Department, which would then call Derby police for emergencies. In case of fire or medical calls, Derby police would then reach Fire Chief Alan Coppolo by cell phone or dial the Storm Ambulance hotline. “We had a lot of work-arounds,” Coppolo said. “We had a couple dozen firefighters ready to go. We had plenty of resources.”
Coppolo also noted that the old red fire boxes, operating for more than 100 years, were still functioning. “This is exactly the reason why I fought to keep it in place,” Coppolo said.