Leaky Roof Knocks Out 911

Salt Lake City (Utah) residents will vote on a $192 million bond measure Nov. 6th that will fund a new public safety building and EOC. But that vote came too late to avoid a 911 outage caused by a leaky roof on Wednesday. Officials said rainwater leaked through the roof of a building housing power supplies for the police department’s computers, radio gear and 911 system. A circuit board was doused by the water at about 1:30 a.m. and shorted out, knocking out all electronic systems for the comm center for about 2 hours. All 911 calls were handled by the Valley Emergency Communications Center during the outage, and they relayed incidents to SLC dispatchers via cell phone. Incidents were dispatched to field units using a battery-powered radio. Comm center gear was working again the next day, but computers at the police department still weren’t working.