A severed phone line that saw emergency calls to the St. Thomas Fire Department unanswered for a short time last month has left fire officials scrambling to come up with a contingency plan to prevent a repeat of the incident in the future.
The department's three 911 lines went dead on August 14 when a construction crew accidentally cut a Bell Canada phone line in the area of Moore Street and Centre Street.
The fire department learned of the problem after Elgin St. Thomas paramedics tried to notify them about a medical call around 11:35 a.m. Unable to get through to the fire department, EMS reached out to St. Thomas police to relay the information, Fire Chief Bob Davidson said in a report to city council.
Fire inspectors quickly determined that they had lost phone service to the department's three 911 lines and the primary communication line with the ambulance communication centre.
"After several calls to the Bell Canada 911 rep, a Bell Canada technician, Northern 911, and the Bell control centre it was discovered that the primary Bell Canada service line with approximately 3,100 individual pairs of wires had been inadvertently cut," Davidson said in the report.
At that point, the fire department forwarded its 911 lines to the police dispatching centre and brought in an additional telecommunications operator to assist. The overtime cost associated with bringing in the additional person was $150.
A temporary fix restored the 911 lines around 9:30 p.m. the same day.
While the police department had two of its 911 lines knocked out, two others remained operational thanks to a contingency plan that utilized alternate line routing to police headquarters.
The fire department is now looking into a similar contingency plan for its emergency lines.