Oconee County commission refers persistent radio and dispatch problems to public safety committee

The Oconee County Advisory Fire Service Commission voted unanimously to refer ongoing radio and dispatch problems to the county public safety committee, after multiple commissioners described spotty reception and equipment problems that they say are affecting field operations.

Commissioners described a sequence of problems that began with an outage at a repeater site they said was hit by lightning, intermittent loss of analog coverage in parts of the county, and persistent reception gaps on both analog and digital channels. Speaker S4, an agency official who oversees equipment checks, said a contracted company, Gumbi, has been hired under the county maintenance contract and had been scheduled to climb a tower to address damage; S4 said some sites had been fixed but others remain intermittent.

“Radios are going to get someone hurt,” Larry Wilkerson read aloud from a text he said he had received quoting Chief Brock, underscoring members’ concern that poor communications could endanger responders, dispatchers or the public. The Chair (S2) added that rushing a wholesale change to a new system without fixing current failures “we're gonna fool around and get somebody killed,” framing the referral as an urgent safety step.

Members reported concrete technical observations: some areas retained digital coverage while analog remained unreliable; at one site lightning reportedly damaged the analog side while digital continued to work. Commissioners also noted inconsistent reception in locations used for search-and-rescue operations, such as the fish hatchery and portions of Round/Long Mountain.

The group agreed to ask the public safety committee to work with county dispatch staff (Justin Ward and Chris Belcher were named in discussion), to request the vendor perform a full systems check, and to identify interim fixes (mobile repeaters, site inspections, or selective analog/digital routing) that could be implemented quickly. A motion to refer the communications issues to the public safety committee passed by voice vote recorded as 6-0.

Next steps: the public safety committee will take the referral and report back to the commission; commissioners said they expect to press county administration and dispatch for documented findings and recommended fixes before pursuing larger equipment investments.