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• Parts Of Del Norte's Emergency Communications Systems Need Replacing; Dispatchers Need Hiring, Consultant Says

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Sheriff Garrett Scott says it took about 20 minutes for his staff to realize that not only were Del Norters without power, their 911 calls weren’t reaching the dispatch center.

With the Kelly and Holiday fires closing in on Pacific Power’s transmission corridor, the utility de-energized that corridor on Aug. 18 to protect residents and first responders. More than 12,000 customers weathered a blackout that lasted about five days. The power outage began amid a series of events that taxed Del Norte County’s emergency responders, Scott said.

“We could not get 911 calls or hardline calls and so what we had to do was transfer our 911 system to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office,” Scott told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Thursday. “They did our 911 calls for a couple of days until the system was somewhat corrected by the phone company.”

According to Scott, the inability for people to reach dispatch via hardline, or landline, had to do with the fire's impact on the phone lines themselves.

However, the DNSO's radio system went down around the time the power went out on Aug. 18, Scott said. Deputies could communicate with each other, but dispatchers couldn't reach deputies unless they were using portable radios, he said.

It’s these issues that a consulting firm, Federal Engineering, is helping the county address. Speaking to Del Norte County supervisors via Zoom on Tuesday, representatives presented Phase 2 of the Office of Emergency Services’ Interoperability Project. This phase focused on identifying and analyzing gaps in the county’s emergency communications system.

It also addressed staffing needs in the dispatch center, comparing Del Norte County salaries with pay in neighboring counties, and touched on issues with the dispatch center itself.

One conclusion Federal Engineering representatives arrived at was the need for Del Norte to replace its radio system, including its mobile radios, Lead Consultant Luis Camarillo said. These are at the end of their life and can yield a degraded performance, he said.

The county, whose law enforcement, fire and EMS agencies communicate via VHF technology, should consider sharing or pooling frequencies to improve coverage, Camarillo said. He noted that while system capacity was adequate day-to-day, congestion issues occur during large events.

Camarillo also recommended transitioning from analog radio technology to Project 25, or P25, digital technology.

“We know there are agencies, state agencies, such as the Department of Corrections and the California Interoperability System that are on P25,” Lead Consultant Luis Camarillo told supervisors. “For the county to achieve interoperability it would need to look at purchasing P25 capable equipment on the system side and P25 equipment on the subscriber side — the mobile radios and portable radios.”

Local repeater sites include Camp Six near Gasquet and Crescent City. Law enforcement agencies also use a repeater site at Red Mountain near Klamath.

In addition to being the repeater site for the sheriff's office, Red Mountain also houses repeaters for the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Scott said.

Camarillo noted that the Red Mountain repeater site is slated to be moved.

Another repeater site in the Klamath area for fire agencies is at Requa, Camarillo said. Fire stations throughout the county also offer tactical and local repeaters, he said.

As for the dispatch center itself, Federal Engineering Project Manager David TerMorshuizen noted the building hasn’t gone through any seismic retrofitting despite being upgraded in 1995. It’s also located within a “FEMA-designated tsunami hazard area,” TerMorshuizen said.

“One last key item, the dispatch center is small with little room for expansion as the number of users on the system grows and call rates increase,” he said.

TerMorshuizen noted that the dispatch center had been understaffed when he and his colleagues presented to the Board of Supervisors in March. At the time, the most senior person in the dispatch center had only 18 months of experience.

On Tuesday, TerMorshuizen noted that two more dispatchers had been hired since he and his colleagues had last appeared before county supervisors. But based on current call rates, they could use one maybe two more to avoid a burden on current staff, he said.

“The salary schedules we’ve collected from the county has been included in the report and appear to be low compared to other regions,” he said. “So it could get challenging to attract applicants from nearby areas to the county.”

Some positives, however, include the state funding upgrades to the county’s 911 system as well as its CAD system.

When Federal Engineering staff concluded their presentation, District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard and District 5 representative Dean Wilson asked about the county’s performance at the height of the Smith River Complex.

Howard noted that the county’s Everbridge system, its mass notification system, didn’t have the needed outreach because it relies on people signing up for alerts.

“We did notice quite a bit of effective communication when we partnered with Del Norte Unified School District and their ability to get messaging out much quicker to a wider audience than us,” Howard said. “I’m hoping, during the evaluation process, you could talk to their IT folks (and find out) if there could be a marrying of systems so we could get a wider audience for those emergency contacts.”

Wilson brought up the county’s 911 system and its performance during the five-day power outage that occurred during the Smith River Complex wildfires.

“With our power outage and fire we had a severe collapse of our 911 system as well as our cell systems and our hardline systems,” Wilson said. “Have you looked at the cause and effects of that failure and how we would best develop a system that would not collapse so readily when needed?”

Scott, however, said that while the local 911 system did fail locally, the phone system’s failure was associated with the fire itself, the power outage and the phone lines coming into Crescent City.

Del Norte County didn’t always have the ability to transfer control of its 911 system to an outside agency, Scott said. According to him, under Wilson’s command as sheriff, a secondary dispatch center had been established at the Crescent City Fire Hall on Washington Boulevard — outside the tsunami zone.

Now that the county can transfer its 911 system to an outside agency during an emergency, Scott said it’s an ability they hope to strengthen. However, cost comes into play when making the needed equipment upgrades to improve interoperability, he said.

“That’s why we reached out and paid the funding to have the assessment done by this company,” Scott said. “To see what our options are, what’s cost effective and how much it’s going to cost to set all these secondary operational procedures up so we’re better equipped for these events.”

Scott noted that state funding is available to upgrade communications systems, it’s extremely competitive. The equipment can also be expensive since the technology is constantly evolving.

Scott pointed to the Del Norte County Search & Rescue team’s mobile operations van as an example. That van, he said, can be used as a dispatch center during emergencies.

“I purchased portable repeater packs, they’re $10,000 a piece,” Scott said, adding that he made that purchase with grant dollars. “You can put different repeaters on different peaks in different locations in a brief case. I’d like to get that set up so the 911 system can go direct into that van through the cellular network.”

Once that occurs, the DNSO would have to integrate its dispatch program with its computer system, Scott said.

Scott said he also wants to upgrade his portable radio systems to enable his deputies to better communicate with each other once they’re outside Crescent City. To increase his deputies’ reach, these radios need to be 6 watt or better, but they can cost between $6,000 and $8,000 per person, Scott said.

You can also pair those radios with trunk repeaters, which further increases their reach, but that can cost $30,000 per patrol car to set up, Scott said.

“There are a lot of different infrastructure things that hopefully that assessment can give us an idea of what we need to plan for and what other agencies are doing,” he said. “And then, of course, they can give us a cost idea of what are the priorities and how do we fix them.”

Following the final phase in the project, Federal Engineering representatives will provide recommendations on how the county can improve its emergency communications systems. They will present their findings to the Board of Supervisors on Dec. 12.

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