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County panel warns that aging equipment and past outages make ECC technology and facilities a priority

Montgomery County Council Public Safety Committee · October 7, 2024

Summary

Officials recounted outages in 2012, 2016 and 2019 tied to aging radio, HVAC and vendor-support failures and urged long-range capital planning for CAD, radio replacement, and facility redundancy to avoid future service interruptions.

County officials pointed to several high-profile failures to illustrate infrastructure risk: a 2012 dispatcher fatigue incident, a 2016 HVAC failure at the alternate backup site and a 2019 public-safety radio outage tied to end-of-life equipment and vendor unsupported parts. "In 2016... HVAC... failed... it was 20 years old," an ECC official said in explaining how aged plant equipment contributed to a multi-hour outage at the backup site.

Panelists stressed the need for deliberate long-range planning when replacing CAD, radios, consoles and other sensitive equipment, and noted that some state funding currently covers consoles and specific equipment while county funds would be necessary for salaries, HVAC, facility renovation and other capital needs. Staff said projects must be staged carefully to avoid transferring all operations to the less-capable backup site at once.

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