Franklin County Commissioners said they have to address communications issues that may be putting local Volunteer Firefighters as well as local residents and visitors at risk.
The issue was first raised last month by Apalachicola Volunteer fireman Bruce Hoffman who told commissioners that there is a communications issue between fire departments, as well as EMS, the sheriff’s office, and dispatch.
Franklin County e-911 coordinator, Renee Brannon, told county commissioners on Tuesday that there are at least two issues that need to be addressed.
One is a broken repeater in Apalachicola that makes it difficult to communicate with the Apalachicola Fire Department and for Apalachicola firefighters to communicate with one another.
The lack of a repeater requires dispatchers to use the State emergency notification system which means dispatchers have to go on-line and type the call out again which delays response.
That was supposed to be a temporary fix after the Eastpoint wildfire in 2018, but it is still being used today.
The county is currently getting a price for the repairs and plans to move the existing repeater from the Apalachicola airport to a Duke Energy tower in the middle of town.’
A bigger issue is the fact that each fire department in the county uses its own paging system, which requires dispatchers to take different steps depending on which fire department is being called out.
All of these issues add to response times, which can put people at risk.
Brannon said all of the fire departments and the local ambulance service need to move to the same paging system to streamline the process and make response times shorter.
County Coordinator Michael Moron said this issue was discussed years ago, but the fire departments were resistant to changing services.
Commissioner Noah Lockley said that as this is a matter of public safety, the county has to find out what it is going to take to fix this, regardless of the cost.
He added that any resistance needs to go out the door as it is the county’s job to get this fixed.
The commission agreed to move as quickly as possible on addressing the communications issue, and will work with fire chiefs to make sure it is done correctly.
The board said it may have to look at increasing what residents pay for fire protection to cover the costs, including the regular maintenance and reprogramming of radios.
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