County's fire radio goes down along with Winder police, fire and city hall ...

The Barrow Journal at 1:11 p.m. received a tip that the county's fire radio had gone down. When a reporter could not reach by phone the city's fire chief, the city administrator or the police chief, it became apparent that the city government's phone system also was down.

The newspaper called the county's E-911 center and asked supervisor Kathy Wallace to contact Winder fire chief Matt Whiting. After placing the reporter on hold for several minutes, Wallace said she had reached Whiting and he would call back.

After attempting to reach several Winder government officials on their cellphones, the reporter shortly after 2 p.m. did make contact with a city councilman on a second attempt. He said he was at a downtown restaurant with another councilman and the city administrator, none of whom was aware of the communications failure.

City administrator Don Toms quickly assessed the problem, and told the newspaper Wednesday evening that Georgia Power Co. had marked the location of the power line, but a city contractor digging the ditch for the sewer discovered too late that a portion of the line actually was not below the markings. The contractor severed a portion of the power line that was connected to a switch in the fire department that also controlled the city government's phone system.

That took down the main fire radio transmitter for county and city fire services. It also killed the power and phone services to Winder fire, Winder police and city hall. Ironically, shortly before the failure of the main fire unit, Barrow County Emergency Services had put back online a backup unit that months ago had been diverted for use as a backup unit for law enforcement communications. So the E-911 center utilized the backup unit as well as an EMS channel to handle fire and EMS emergency communications.

Winder police chief Dennis Dorsey said Thursday that the E-911 center did not handle the city's police dispatching, as a city official mistakenly said Wednesday. Rather, the police dispatchers used portable generators and radios to dispatch officers.

City public works crews and Georgia Power personnel restored the phone service just before 2:30 p.m. The main fire base station was brought back into service at 3 p.m., sources said.