[Mendocino County] Grand Jury: Mendocino County’s Emergency Communications System in urgent need of repairs

Report notes seven failures in 2019

 With summer wildfire season in full swing and more preemptive power shutoffs looming this fall, a report by the Mendocino County Grand Jury urges county officials to ensure its Emergency Communications System will perform as needed.

“The system is experiencing an ever-increasing failure rate causing loss of communication between emergency responders,” states the report from the 2019-2020 Mendocino County Civil Grand Jury titled “The Emergency Communication System in Mendocino County: Protecting Life, Health, Safety and Welfare.”

The Grand Jury reports that “seven failures occurred in 2019, two of which were over four hours in duration, (and that) outages within the system are increasing yearly. During a failure, an affected area can be completely without communications for local fire departments, Cal Fire, law enforcement, and ambulance service and … every emergency the county faces puts first responders at even greater than expected risk.”

The Grand Jury notes that 24 local agencies and county departments depend on the county’s Emergency Communication System, including the Anderson Valley Fire Department, Cal Fire, the California Highway Patrol, the Fort Bragg Police Department, the Mendocino County Major Crimes Task Force, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office, Redwood Coast Fire, South Coast Fire, South Coast life Support, the Ukiah Police Department and the Willits Police Department.

The Grand Jury also reports that during the Oct. 22, 2019, meeting of the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors, ClientFirst, a technology consulting firm, “emphasized that the county’s existing ECS has reached end of life, (and the firm) recommended a five-year, three-phase replacement schedule for the ECS which has an estimated cost of $11.3 million. Of the total amount, $1.6 million for Phase 1 was approved by the Board of Supervisors on April 20, 2020.”

The Grand Jury also points to its two previous reports on the county’s Emergency Communications System, the first in 2007 that described it as “complex and in imminent danger of permanent failure. Failure will result in it being unable to meet the existing demands, including dispatching of 911 calls, creating an emergency of its own.”

In the findings of that report 13 years ago, the Grand Jury stated that “each communication vault contains both the repeaters and the microwave equipment (and) most of the vaults are old and have significant structural problems resulting in leaks. The Grand Jury recommends that defective or deteriorating communication vaults be repaired or replaced.”

However, this year’s Grand Jury reports finding “no record of the communication vaults being repaired or replaced or maintained.”

The Grand Jury report goes on to state that “in the 13 years since it detailed the poor condition of remote sites, it could not establish that the Board of Supervisors had allocated funding to repair the buildings (vaults) and infrastructure which house current Emergency Communications equipment, and will also house $8.2 million in proposed new equipment.”

The three phases of proposed replacement, the Grand Jury notes, “would create a reliable and redundant radio communication network. Phase 1 replaces microwave repeaters to improve communication resiliency and stability. Phase 2 includes replacing microwave radios and ethernet routers to increase the speed of communication. Phase 3 includes completion of redundancies in the sixteen site County system to reduce the likelihood of communications failures.”

The Grand Jury notes that ClientFirst “also listed relocation and replacement of the 20-year-old sheriff’s dispatch console, a central part of the Emergency Communications System, as a critical need. (However), funding for the sheriff’s dispatch console, as well as for Phase 2 and 3, has not been addressed.

“The Board of Supervisors must actively engage with the (Mendocino County) Executive Office and commit to completing this project, ensuring the life, health, safety, and welfare of Mendocino County residents,” the Grand Jury states. “Not making necessary upgrades to the remote sites prior to installing an approximate $8.2 million in new equipment is equivalent to buying all new furniture for a house with a leaking roof.”

The Grand Jury notes that a response from the Board of Supervisors is required within 90 days of the June 3 report, and a response from the county Executive Office is requested within 90 days, which would be the first week of September.

Ukiah Journal
August 12, 2020