KENT—The emergency notification system worked as it should during the 9-1-1 outage experienced Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 22, according to Emergency Management Director Matt Starr.
The system was down in various towns across Connecticut from 12:30 to 3:23 p.m., according to Starr, but a temporary phone number was posted on community websites to notify residents how to call in emergencies. 9-1-1, which connects Northwest Corner callers to Litchfield County Dispatch (LCD), has been used to request emergency assistance since the 1970s.
Starr said he had not been told what happened to the system, but that the problem affected other phone systems as well, such as that at Kent Center School.
“These things happen from time to time,” he said, “We’ll follow up to try to find out what happened, but they may not release information until its fully investigated.”
Starr said first responders are notified of emergencies via radio and cellular phone so there was no difficulty in dispatching crews. First responders were at the firehouse to ensure that they would be ready, and, in fact, two calls did come in.
One was a false alarm and the second a mutual aid call for a structure fire in Gaylordsville. “Everything went fairly well,” Starr said. “I heard the calls come in and I could hear them start out right away, so that was good.”
Starr left work in neighboring New York State and was in the Emergency Management Center in Town Hall. “I didn’t have to because the center wasn’t activated, but we were working to get the public service messages out.”
Starr, a former member and former chief in the Kent Volunteer Fire Department, has been EMD since September. It is an unpaid position. “Emergency management is less physically demanding than the fire department, but I can still give back to the community,” he said.
