Greenfield Twp. firefighters were cutting a driver out of a Jeep last week when an elderly man from the other car involved in the wreck started having chest pains.
Firefighters tried to call for another ambulance, but the crash scene near the intersection of Route 247 and Greenfield Road was in a dead zone in the county radio network, Fire Chief P.J. Fortuner recalled.
“We had to call Susquehanna County to dispatch the ambulance,” Chief Fortuner said. “It took a good 10 minutes for the ambulance to get there because they couldn’t hear us.”
Lackawanna County will begin a $3.62 million upgrade of its fire and emergency medical services radio system this spring to address poor coverage in the northern end of the county and update a communication network that emergency services Director David Hahn described as antiquated and obsolete.
The plan is to expand the number of sites where equipment is mounted on towers or buildings from five locations to 11. It’s similar to the upgrade to the county police communication network last year — a project funded by $500,409 of a federal Community Oriented Policing Services program grant.
County officials hope to wrap up the fire and EMS upgrade in the summer of 2016.
Equipment lease and maintenance costs outlined in the contract with Motorola Solutions will be paid out between Nov. 1, 2016, and Nov. 1, 2027, and during the first five years of the deal, the costs are less than or comparable to the roughly $270,000 annual cost of maintaining the current system, Mr. Hahn said.
The combined annual price will rise to $420,000 in 2020, but Mr. Hahn said the expenses will be eligible for Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency grants to offset them.
“Our radio system is a minimum of 20 years old, and our radio system is failing terribly,” Mr. Hahn said. “We spend tens of thousands of dollars per year fixing and maintaining our radio system just at five sites, let alone the 11 sites.”
New equipment will include replacements for receivers and transmitters for the simulcast radio system, 15 dispatch consoles that provide the operating system allowing the 911 center to communicate with the field and dispatch desks.