Emergency planning and cooperative agreements paid off yesterday to keep the Reno, Nev., region's emergency 9-1-1 system operating when phone service was disrupted about 12:30 p.m. at the Regional Emergency Communications Center (E-Comm). Following the outage, E-Comm immediately implemented its emergency communications plan to keep the area's 9-1-1 emergency system in operation in cooperation with the Sparks Public Safety Center at the Sparks Police Department.
Reno E-Comm supervisors used personal cell phones to initiate re-routing of the system through AT&T, and to send E-Comm call takers to Sparks to staff phone lines to support re-routing of calls to that system.
As of 1:30 p.m. the E-Comm center was still without telephone service, but 9-1-1 emergency calls were being handled without disruption. Personnel from AT&T were responding to the Reno E-Comm to investigate and correct the problem.
