Lightning strike damaged two radio CPUs at Public Safety Building; county temporarily rerouted fire dispatch

Region 51 Emergency Management Director Brandon Myers told the board that a thunderstorm on Oct. 16 produced extensive cloud-to-ground lightning that struck the Lincoln County Public Safety Building and fried two CPUs that operate the county fire radio/paging systems.

Myers said Brady Fire retained functioning paging and dispatch capability, and county staff used portable radios and event-state channels as temporary workarounds so departments such as North Platte, Brady, Maxwell, Wallace, Hershey and Sutherland could receive callouts. By the following day a vendor had restored paging and partial radio capability; dispatch-to-department computer radio communications were expected to be restored after parts arrived in one to two days.

Several commissioners pressed Myers and county staff about the lack of redundancy for the radio CPUs. Myers said the strike was a "fluke" event that affected only part of the fire-side system and that some redundancy exists but not at the specific CPU units that failed. Commissioners asked staff to explore the cost and feasibility of full redundancy for critical communications hardware; Myers agreed that the county should investigate options and costs to reduce single points of failure, citing the public-safety stakes.

Myers and commissioners said dispatch performed radio checks and pager tests and that initial notification lag was short because dispatch began troubleshooting immediately. Commissioners thanked emergency management and dispatch staff for the workaround steps and asked staff to return with cost estimates and implementation recommendations for more robust communications redundancy.