Vandalized cell tower creates problems for Woodbridge dispatch system
WOODBRIDGE — When you dial 911, first responders are out the door within seconds. But, there's a process on how to locate and direct firefighters on where they need to go.
When that system is down, it slows down their whole operation.
That's been the case for an entire week at the Woodbridge Fire Department.
"Some of them weren't logging on to the system, so that means our dispatch wouldn't be able to see us," Woodbridge Fire Chief Darin Downey said. "When we found the issue, we started to dive in deeper and they said it happened to be low cell service."
That low cell service was caused by a fiber cut at a cell tower, which created connectivity issues for days.
It also created problems for one of the most essential pieces of fire equipment — Automatic Vehicle Locator.
"We can always see their position," Chief Downey continued. "So if there's a call, then they can dispatch the nearest unit to the incident.
For an agency where seconds matter, not having a good connection for days was a concern.
"For cardiac arrest, they can only survive four to six minutes without oxygen, and then you end up, you know, biologically dead," Chief Downey said. "For first responders to get their rapid is in early defibrillation, early ALS, early BLS, is the key to saving lives."
Along with the wires being cut, there's another problem.
According to Verizon, a protected birds' nest is blocking access to where they need to make the repair, which is why this fix is taking longer than normal.
While Woodbridge Fire was able to get their system back up and running, they've already been considering a future solution.
"T-Mobile was a potential way to have a redundancy system with Verizon, so that way, if one cellular service was down, the other one would still work. We're understanding that July 1, T-Mobile was going live with automatically switching to Starlink if neither cell towers are able to get connected."
Verizon said their engineers are working with local and federal officials to make sure the nest is protected while they make the necessary repairs.
