MC E911 receives $165,000

The Madison County E911 Operations Center was awarded a $165,000 grant though the commonwealth to give Madison and its surrounding area better emergency radio coverage. The announcement came at the Oct. 29 board of supervisors’ workshop.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant will pay for equipment to strengthen the coverage area of the center’s radio system, update its, and other emergency responders, systems and increase its working interaction with Orange and Greene counties, according to E-911 Coordinator Robert “Radar” Finks.

“(The grant will) help alleviate some of the current communication shortfalls that we have right now,” Finks said in a follow-up interview. “Anytime you have any type of communication shortfalls (when) lives are on the line, if (the emergency service responders) can’t have good communications that can present a problem.”

It will pay to add new antennas to the tower on Beautiful Run Road, said Finks at the workshop. The new antennas will “repeat” the signal sent to emergency responder vehicles.

“Currently, with the repeater sites that we have, we have some dead spots – Wolftown, U.S. 29 on the south end and up toward the Middle River area, they’re all dead spots,” Finks said.

The new repeater will be on a higher tower, which should send adequate signal to those areas, according to Finks.

“This tower is a lot taller, it would give us a better radius,” he said. “What we are planning on doing is getting this tower up and running and leaving the Woodberry (Forest School) location on the backburner because it also gives us another site.”

Part of the grant money will go toward helping the emergency services update the broadcast equipment. A Federal Communications Committee ruling means that the group must broadcast on a narrow bandwidth. This money will cover upgrading the primary radio systems for the Madison County Rescue Squad, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office and the Madison County Volunteer Fire Company.

The grant will also cover helping the group work with Greene County responders.

“This will add communication directly from our dispatch center to (the) Greene dispatch center and any road units they may have,” Finks said. “It gives us another fail safe, right now if our center fails, Orange is our back up, but if something else were to happen (this) would give us Greene as a back up for our radio system also and vice-versa.”

The group already has a similar system in place to work with Orange County responders, according to Finks.

“We have a mutual agreement in place that Orange will be our back up center,” he said. “We’re talking phone systems and everything, we can flip a switch and do everything from our center in Orange.”

The exchange will not be as complete in the new arrangement with Greene, but it will allow for easier communication between responders from the two counties.

It was not immediately clear when the new equipment and upgrades would be in place.

The supervisors had voted at their Oct. 13 meeting to award money to the program if they won the grant. The county will pay for the initial installation and then be reimbursed by the state.