Earthquake Generated No Problems & Press Release

The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the east coast on Tuesday created no problems for public safety communications centers in a 10-state region, but it did generate a press release that linked the earthquake to political efforts to create a nationwide public safety radio network. Residents over a 12-state region felt the earthquake and began dialing and texting on their cellular phones, tying up every major wireless carrier. The carriers later reported that no facilities were damaged from the quake, but that network congestion was entirely man-made and lasted only about 30 minutes. Few true emergencies resulted from the earthquake, but many dialed 911 to report it and ask questions. Albermarle County (Virg.) reported no damage from the quake, but that their overloaded 911 system stopped routing calls to dispatchers for about 40 minute.  Roanoke (Virg.) dispatchers, about 150 from the epicenter, fielded 160 calls within eight minutes of the quake, about four times normal volume. Allentown (Penn.) dispatchers handled 300 call in the 60 minutes after the quake, some reporting minor problems. In a press release the Public Safety Alliance (PSA) used the non-event to claim, “Earthquake underscores need for public safety network.” The PSA said that commercial networks became overloaded with citizen calls, but admitted that, “There was (sic) no reports of outages or congestion on public safety radio systems.” Even so, the cellular congestion did impact first responders, “Who relied on their commercial cell phones and data cards to communicate with their colleagues and families,” the PSA said. Proposals for the D-Block of spectrum include having commercial carriers create and maintain a public safety network. But according to the PSA, the earthquake experience proves, “Public safety cannot rely on commercial networks during critical incident and major events, as they cannot gain access to roam onto or gain the level of priority access necessary to be effective in such incidents.” Read the entire PSA press release here.