Emergency Paging ‘Not Working’
Glasscock County Sheriff Keith Burnett told the county commissioners’ court April 13 that the telephone paging system used to contact emergency personnel is not working when the calls go to cell phones, due to inadequate cell phone coverage in the county. Whether or not a cell phone will get a message is hit and miss, depending on the location and terrain.
He said the coverage went downhill when Wes-Tex was taken over by AT&T. He said other carriers are no better, because they all use too few towers here and there is too little power from them (because it’s cheaper to operate towers on less power). County employees and vehicles use AT&T wireless; emergency volunteers use a variety of servers.
Burnett said he was mistaken when he told the court months ago that his office didn’t need a dispatcher; that he and two deputies could handle the dispatching themselves. The paging problem is complicated by the fact that there is no dispatcher in the office with a land-line phone, repeating calls or trying other numbers when one doesn’t answer, no one to know if a volunteer got the message or who is responding to the call and no one to communicate with the sheriff or deputies by radio.
He said 911 calls are still answered in Stanton, which then attempts to call the Glasscock County Sheriff’s office to do the dispatching of emergency personnel. Critical problems could arise if those calls do not get through to the cell phones of Burnett and/or the deputies.
According to Burnett, hiring dispatchers could only work in conjunction with a full-time, operating jail, and they would also be jailers and secretaries. He said with a jail, Sterling County would help with the cost of salaries and would pay to house their prisoners here. Burnett also pointed out that Glasscock County would no longer have to pay Reagan County to house its prisoners, and would also have the free labor of most prisoners.
He said he doesn’t know how to remedy the paging problem without hiring dispatchers. He said it would take four and a half people to cover the work the necessary 24/7 at a probable total cost of $189,000 per year (possibly shared with Sterling County). He asked the commissioners to suggest a temporary solution to the problem until a permanent one is found, but no one had a viable suggestion.
Burnett showed commissioners a county map booklet that will be given to emergency volunteers to assist them in finding locations in the county. County emergency vehicles also are equipped with GPS units.