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Some residents throughout the Mahoning Valley the last two weekends have had had a hard time reaching 911 after twin windstorms devastated residents with downed trees, electric lines and prolonged power outages.
Overwhelmed dispatchers have displayed tenacity in getting people needed assistance.
"I think this county as a whole did phenomenal," said Patty Goldner, interim director of Trumbull County 911 said last week between the two Saturday storms.
About the March 25 storm, Goldner said her crews had almost no warning.
"We knew at 2 p.m. that there was a thunderstorm warning, then it turned into what it was."
The wind storm that blew through the Mahoning Valley took many by surprise by downing electric lines and trees, and cutting off communication to first responders. Another similar storm on April 1 took out more trees and downed wires in some of the same places, and caused the death of a young Leavittsburg teen when a tree fell on the house he was in.
As of 9 p.m. Sunday, Ohio Edison reported more than 6,880 outages in Trumbull County, just about 5,055 in Mahoning County and 1,300 in Columbiana County.
Lauren Siburkis, spokeswomen for the power company, noted "thousands of damage locations, consisting of hundreds of broken poles, downed power lines and fallen trees and debris blocking road access."
At this stage, Siburkis said Ohio Edison's primary focus is to remove any hazards and assess the damage so that crews can access the site of an outage and begin to safely make the repairs.
"This can be a time-consuming process," she said.
For restoration, Siburkis said the company can not give exact times, but it could take a few days. She said more than 200 additional resources are assisting with restoration efforts, with more crews coming.
MARCH 25 STORM
Trumbull County, on both Saturdays, was issued a severe thunderstorm warning by the National Weather Service in Cleveland. Weather service officials noted winds topped out at 60 mph until almost midnight on March 25. The wind gusts were lower and didn't last as long on Saturday.
Goldner said 911 calls about severe weather damage began about 2:30 p.m. March 25.
Dispatchers fielded 43 emergency calls in the first half hour of the storm. Goldner said the afternoon shift of dispatchers worked nonstop from 3 until 11 p.m., fielding 1,075 calls, of which 524 were emergencies. Typically, the afternoon shift fields 80 to 90 calls.
Rodger Laird, Trumbull 911 operations manager, said from 3 to 4 p.m. on March 25, the dispatch center received 162 calls, which is close to the average the center typically gets in 24 hours.
Goldner noted that these calls are on top of the work her team does to actually dispatch first responders, which requires radio communication. She said it is not as simple as answering a call, asking what the emergency is and moving on. The dispatchers have to answer calls and communicate with first responders simultaneously.
"The team of dispatchers on duty during this critical weather event deserve to be recognized for their incredible tenacity and professionalism," Goldner stated.
She presented certificates of commendation to their dispatchers because of their job performance during the storm and its aftermath.
HIGH CALL VOLUME
Goldner said because of the high call volume, her dispatchers were overwhelmed.
The Trumbull 911 center has 10 dispatching units. In a normal shift with normal call volume, Goldner said it aims for seven dispatchers to be present. On March 25, there were nine dispatchers for the afternoon shift.
"You can have every seat filled. You can go beyond that and have 24 seats filled. You will never keep up with that kind of call volume," Goldner said.
When all dispatchers are occupied, calls go to trunk lines. Once the 12 trunk lines are full, the calls roll over to the 911 nonemergency line, which can hold six calls. Dispatchers prioritize incoming 911 calls rather than nonemergency calls.
Goldner said calls can go to the wrong dispatch center if callers are using a cell phone, depending on which cell tower from which the call pings. For example, a caller in Weathersfield who is close to the county line could have the call ping off a tower in Austintown Mahoning County, which would cause it to be routed to Austintown dispatch.
When that happens, the call must be transferred to the correct dispatch center. With the current infrastructure, transfer calls go to the nonemergency line.
At that point, there is no way for dispatchers to truly differentiate between an emergency and nonemergency call before they pick up, because calls have been switched between different lines.
BOARDMAN CONCERNS
Shirley Coniglio of Chester Drive in Boardman said she lost power about 6 p.m. March 25. She said she reported it and Ohio Edison kept changing the day and time when the power would come back on.
"I understand there were an unprecedented number of downed trees," Coniglio said on Wednesday afternoon, and she was cold. "All I want is to get some reassurance from Ohio Edison, like to give me the go ahead to get a hotel room. … I was so frustrated to the point that I was ready to document all the expenses and send them a bill."
It took crews until Monday to figure out that a tree in Coniglio's front yard was caught in a live wire -- and she said that was only because the tree had caught fire. Coniglio said a forestry crew had to come in late Tuesday to take the tree down.
After getting a message that power wouldn't be restored until Thursday, Coniglio talked to a customer service representative for Ohio Edison who promised a crew would be dispatched to her home because of the woman's medical condition.
"They took about 45 minutes to get my power back," Coniglio said -- noting the crew was there when she arrived home later Wednesday evening.
Jason Loree, Boardman Township administrator, said as of Thursday afternoon, not all repairs had been completed on township utility poles, and more bad weather hit on Saturday. He hopes First Energy can get repairs completed quickly.
"As someone who is in the dispatch center during the aftermath, the amount of damage spread out throughout the county was large enough to really impact FirstEnergy's ability to respond," Loree said. "The other issue we got from First Energy was during that (on March 25) evening with the high winds, they were not able to put crews in lift trucks to start working on repairs."
Loree said the widespread damage had the electric company prioritizing calls.
He said the most dangerous incident came during an electrical fire at Omni Carpet, 5904 South Ave.
"In talking with our fire chief, the department did attempt to reach out and get the power turned off by FirstEnergy, but were unsuccessful," Loree said.
Late Friday, Lauren Siburkis of First Energy responded to the newspaper's questions about the outage response.
"One of the reasons why many customers, like the businesses you mentioned, remained without power last Saturday is because sustained high winds hindered our crews' ability to get up in a bucket truck while winds exceeded 40 mph," Siburkis said. "Safety is our top priority."
Siburkis said Ohio Edison line workers and support personnel worked around the clock to restore more than 200,000 customers who were impacted by last week's wind storm.
By Tuesday, more than 95 percent of all impacted customers were back up and running from the March 25 storm, Siburkis said.
UTILITY ISSUES
Some Trumbull County residents couldn't get through to 911 last week because of utility issues.
On both Saturdays, residents in the Perkins Jones Road area in Bazetta Township, near a main electric substation feeding several businesses along the Elm Road strip, reported outages. On consecutive weeks, the Bazetta businesses, including restaurants and the Walmart Supercenter, had to close on both Saturdays.
Laird said anyone who calls 911 in Trumbull County and hangs up will get a call back from an automated message -- asking if that person meant to call 911 for an emergency, or if it was a mistake. If that does not happen, Laird said that means the call isn't going through because of a problem with a utility.
"As it stands now, if there is no internet and the phone lines are down, you're not getting in here," Goldner said.
For cell phone callers, if there is a problem with the cell towers, they might not be able to reach 911. Laird said T-Mobile, AT&T and Spectrum told the 911 center either on Saturday or Sunday that they were experiencing connectivity problems throughout the county during the storm on March 25.
Laird said Lumen Technologies, previously Century Link, also reported having problems with its landline service in the county. Laird also noted that when the internet is out, phones that require internet to make calls, such as many office desk phones, cannot make calls.
In February, 82 percent of the calls the 911 center received were from cell phones, 7 percent were from land lines and 11 percent were internet calls.
Laird said that the Multi-Agency Radio Communication System (MARCS), did not report any problems. MARCS is a wireless, digital communication system for first responders. It is how 911 dispatchers communicate with police and fire.
Many first responder agencies in the county use MARCS and others are looking to make the move after infrastructure is added. The only agencies in the county that do not use MARCS are Niles police and fire, Hubbard Township police, Hubbard city police, Hartford police, Fowler police and Brookfield police.
Laird said Niles does not use MARCS because the system cannot penetrate the Eastwood Mall. The MARCS system cannot effectively reach the other communities until another tower is added in Brookfield, which is in process.
"Unfortunately, some outages continued through early Thursday in areas that experienced significant tree damage and had isolated issues affecting individuals home only," Siburkis said. "We had more than 500 additional line workers and support personnel engaged in our restoration effort -- and they replaced more than 90,000-feet of downed power lines and more than 300 broke utility poles across our service area -- just to give you an extent of damage we were up against."
Those crews again were put to the test again on Saturday.
What to do
Should you reach the Trumbull County 911 Center by calling 911? Or by calling the nonemergency number, 330-675-2730. Patty Goldner, 911 director, gives some direction:
• DO call 911 in the case of an emergency;
• DO call the nonemergency line if you need police but it is not an emergency, such as a neighbor dispute;
• DO NOT call 911 during storms to report utility problems;
• DO NOT call 911 to get information on community events;
• DO call 911 if you are unsure if your call is an emergency or not.