January 8, 2014 - As of yesterday, January 7, analog radio across Shelby County is silent. Due to issues with the new digital setup, the analog equipment was shutdown by D.F.W. Communications at the request of Sheriff Willis Blackwell. With the shutdown of the analog equipment, the area volunteer fire departments are without their once trusted paging system.
Sheriff Blackwell gave a report of the problems his department has been coping with since the radio system went digital which mainly included the unreliability of the mixed mode (digital and analog). The mixed mode system, as was, often times left officers unable to communicate with dispatch while on scene of a call. Blackwell said, "Those two frequencies [analog and digital] were interfering with each other. When somebody keyed up on analog, it cut digital off."
Shad Sparks said, "The fire departments have not been getting the pages anyway." The installer, DFW Communications, took down the voters which were installed in the Tenaha and Shelbyville areas. The voters, a booster for radio communication, improved talk-back range from the vehicle mounted and hand-held radios to the base station located in dispatch. The voting equipment was removed some time ago and when they were removed volunteer fire fighters in the county stopped hearing their pages.
Dispatch has been manually calling fire chiefs from each department when a fire occurred. According to Sheriff Blackwell, the installer will be replacing the voters but it will be equipment for digital radio. Both Blackwell and Sparks said that is not going to help analog because the analog doesn't work on digital voters.
Fire departments are scrambling to find a solution to the situation. Shelbyville V.F.D. signed up with a 911 system which sends out a text message to the fire fighters alerting them. Dispatch, the 911 operator, will type in the information about the fire into a web based service which then immediately sends out the information in a text message to the phones of the fire fighters.
West Shelby County Volunteer Fire Department has already experienced the problem of not having the paging system. They received a call from dispatch for a fire last night. Fire Chief, Jerryl Adams, reported that fortunately the fire was a controlled burn because their response time was greatly affected by the change in procedure of alerting fire fighters.
All those involved are concerned about the future and how the volunteer fire departments are going to handle the silent radio-waves which they have relied upon for so many years. Shelby County Judge Rick Campbell, DETCOG, and the fire departments are all looking into the situation and looking for a solution.
The change in equipment was mandated by the FCC and funded through DETCOG grants offered to assist law enforcement agencies with the mandated changes. DETCOG grant funding ran out before it was made available to fire departments.
