By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
According to 911 Director Mike Simmons, the air conditioning has been restored at the State Siren Tower. “The air conditioning has been restored at the State Siren Tower,” Simmons said. “The parts come in this past Friday and they were not due to be installed until the following week but they knew that it was such a need that they went ahead and come up Friday and took care of it.”
The tower’s air conditioning unit needed replaced due to catastrophic failure of the old unit that resulted in the overheating of vital equipment in the building at the tower’s base, according to Simmons at the previous Commission meeting.
Tucker County Commissioner Mike Rosenau questioned Simmons on the status of routine inspection at the site. “Let me ask you while we are on the at subject, did you talk to them about regular maintenance for that equipment?” Rosenau said.
“The siren tech will check the compressor now,” Simmons said.
“So he will check the State’s equipment to make sure it is in workable order and safety?” Rosenau said. “I just want to make sure that somebody is checking it.”
“It is maintained,” Simmons said. “He’s actually the one that discovered it.”
Simmons said that maintenance of the site is a group effort. “It works a little funny up there,” Simmons said. “Everybody puts in a little bit to the well-being of the site and that’s Sirens portion to the kitty that they check and maintain the site and that includes the equipment.”
According to Simmons, Tucker County is responsible for propane. “We put the propane in the tank that fuels the generator,” Simmons said.
Tucker County Emergency Management Director Kevin White informed the Commission of the history of the tower. “That come about, about five years ago,” White said. “The State stepped in and asked that since everybody – and they didn’t do it just here, they did it in all counties – but since all counties utilize their towers in each county, for free, they wanted us to pay for propane as our kick in.”
“That’s only fair,” Rosenau said. “Like you said earlier, team effort and that’s fair.”
“That’s Siren’s chunk to maintain the site,” Simmons said. “They check the equipment. He weed eats. And he’s up there regular.”
Simmons also informed the Commission that the air conditioning in the 911 Center has also been fixed. “The air conditioning the Com Center Server Room has been fixed or replaced,” Simmons said. “They were on site Friday. It took them a good part of the day. They were able to do it in one day. So it is staying a nice, crisp 66 degrees in there.”
Simmons said he was contacted by the center’s contractor in charge of monitoring equipment. “I was even notified by our contractor…They contacted me and say, ‘Hey, I take it you had the air system fixed in there because I’m showing all the fans on all the equipment has powered down to a lower level.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it should be good now.’”
Simmons also updated the Committee on the status of the 911 Center’s fiber optic upgrade. “The fiber connection from the Com Center to the tower, the point to point connection, is, according to Frontier, ready for traffic.”
According to Simmons, the center will be transferring over to the fiber connection as a primary connection to the tower. “We have to still hook up the fail-safe and we cannot technically go in there and configure that without BearCom on site because it’s Motorola technology and they contract BearCom because they are within one hour of our facility tower. So they have to be there…when he configures that. And when I talked to BearCom on Friday, they said that they could be here guaranteed within the next two weeks…So after that we should be on the new connection. It should be a lot better.”
Simmons informed the Commission of the purpose of the fail-safe in the system, “That’s the device that should one connection go out, it automatically switches to the other,” Simmons said.
Rosenau explained the upgrades. “Just so you know, we’re talking out primary that we use now, we’ve increased the capabilities by going to Frontier and adding a new line,”Rosenau said. “So now our primary that we have now will become our secondary.”
According to Simmons, the new monitoring equipment is on site. “The monitoring equipment is on site at the 911 Center for the power and temperature,” Simmons said. According to Simmons the technician will stay over a couple of days when the fail-safe is installed to install the equipment. “So within two weeks, we should be done with all of our projects,” Simmons said.
The next meeting of the Tucker County Commission will be held on August 23 at 6 p.m. at the Tucker County Courthouse Old Courtroom in Parsons.