[Scan-DC] York County will add radio towers to improve 911 radio reception

[Alan Henney]

York Daily Record (Pennsylvania)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News

October 2, 2009 Friday

County will add radio towers to improve 911 radio reception: Emergency responders in the southwest of the county complained of spotty service.

BYLINE: Tom Joyce, York Daily Record, Pa.

SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS

LENGTH: 606 words

Oct. 2--The York County commissioners approved the construction of two new transmission towers to address complaints of spotty reception in the southwestern part of the county.

County administrator Chuck Noll said the company that installed the county's new 911 radio system, Harris Corp., has offered the county a considerable discount on the equipment that the project will require. It would normally come to about $1.4 million, but Harris has agreed to provide it for $600,000.

Even so, the engineering and construction will likely push the total cost to up around $1 million. That would put the total cost of installing the new system at about $400,000 or $500,000 over budget, Noll said. 

Plans call for a transmitter on top of Hanover Hospital and another new tower at the West Manheim Township municipal building.

He said county officials won't have a definite timeline until the engineering is done, but predicted the towers will likely be completed sometime next year.

"It will make things safer for my personnel, the firefighters of the Hanover area and the citizens of the Hanover area," said Hanover Fire Commissioner James Roth, who attended the meeting.

County commissioner Doug Hoke suggested that "some kind of dialogue take place with the contractor."

"I do believe correcting the coverage problems is essential, but I believe the cost should be paid by the contractor, not the taxpayers," Hoke said.

Noll said that, technically, Harris Corp. fulfilled the terms

of its contract, which required a radio system that covers 95 percent of the county 95 percent of the time.

Since the county's fire departments and EMS agencies switched to the $36 million digital 911 system, reviews from emergency responders have generally been good. But municipalities in the southwestern part of the county have complained repeatedly about it.

Eric Bistline, executive director of York County emergency services, gave commissioners a report on the situation at last week's meeting. He said that distance and topography are preventing the digital system from reaching spots in Hanover borough and Penn and West Manheim Townships.

Firefighters there have been using the old, analog radios instead of the new digital ones, Bistline reported.

REACTION

A number of emergency service providers and municipal officials from the southwestern part of the county were present at Wednesday's meeting. While they were pleased with the commissioners' decision, they still wondered whether the new towers would solve their problems altogether.

"Nobody can answer that until we get down the road," Hanover Fire Commissioner James Roth said. "It's always been a problem in the Hanover area since the first dispatch system was set up in the 1970s. It's because of our location."

Manheim Township manager Loren Riebling said that, on Sunday night, emergency workers in his area were looking for a missing senior citizen who wandered off, and was eventually found. The searchers complained of distortion over their radios.

He asked commissioners to take into account the problems in that region when they make arrangements for the new towers.

"We are a very topographically challenged area," he said.

LISTEN ONLINE

--Click here to listen to the York County 911 scanner.

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