ARKANSAS, USA — In the age of technology, service connection is imperative to keep necessary facilities running smoothly, including public safety. When service outages happen, one of the biggest questions is how people in danger will receive help.
"People are very dependent on wireless information technology, and if there's an outage, it can certainly prohibit them from being able to call for emergency services," says Washington County Emergency Manager John Luther.
Luckily, counties in Northwest Arkansas are prepared.
"We use a different operating system so, we weren't impacted at all, thankfully," says Melody Kwok with Benton County.
If the outage from last night were to affect Benton County, Kwok says their IT department has procedures in place to update each computer until everything is back up and running. She adds dispatch calls during an outage would be immediately rerouted.
"CENTCOM would try routing to Rogers, Bentonville, Siloam Springs, or even Washington County. However, we could route to take our calls while we were down in that situation. And then our department would come in. They would help roll it back," she says.
Washington County also says they did not experience any system shortages last night. But Luther says they would have been prepared because of new public safety radio and other precautions.
"We went ahead in our county and added some backup powers. They're independent of the radio system so if that were to fail, we've got another layer of redundancy— kind of like a spare tire in your car," says Luther.
They even have a backup plan for the backup plan.
"Then we call our last mile, our amateur radio communications. And those parties can help us because they're not infrastructure dependent. They can help us communicate if needed. So we feel good on the emergency services side," says Luther.
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