After having technical issues this winter, Wellington North Fire Chief Dave Guilbault sought council’s support to install an additional repeater at the Mount Forest water tower to enhance pager coverage for firefighters.
In his April 9 report, Guilbault explained Wellington North Fire Service (WNFS) pays an annual fee for the paging dispatch service out of the City of Guelph. The paging system and infrastructure is owned by Wellington County.
In November, there were times when pages were not received by firefighters of the Mount Forest station.
Guilbault stated MRC Wireless, the infrastructure technicians, investigated several solutions.
“Because we had several incidences, they weren’t sure what had failed, so they changed out the repeater… then they realized there was a broken wire (in the Conn tower) to this delay system and they changed the wire,” said Guilbault.
Mount Forest pages are received from a tower in Conn. If the Conn tower fails, pages are received by either the Harriston or Clifford towers. Guilbault said there is a gap in the signal around Mount Forest.
Councillor Lisa Hern asked if there were any signal issues in Arthur.
“The main hub of the entire system is just south of Arthur, so everything radiates out from that and that’s providing coverage to the Arthur firefighters from there,” said Mayor Andy Lennox.
Guilbault explained when a call is received, a page is sent out to all towers.
“When Conn failed, the next closest one depending on where you were would have been Harriston or Clifford. So we were too far away from those,” said Guilbault.
A roundtable discussion was held in January with system and county officials about possible solutions.
“The issue and concerns are equipment failure and lack of redundancy in the system,” said Guilbault.
“There needs to be redundancy in place should the County of Wellington paging equipment fail.”
A MRC Wireless report suggested an additional repeater on the Mount Forest water tower would increase system redundancy.
“If the Conn or Mount Forest sites were to fail, pages should still be able to be received in Mount Forest,” stated Guilbault.
“It should be noted the WNFS has taken temporary measures to ensure pages are sent
and received, should the Conn tower site fail again.
“The lack of redundancy in the system for Mount Forest is a threat to firefighter and public
safety.”
The cost to add a repeater to Mount Forest would be approximately $60,000, though the chief said he anticipates the county will cover the cost.
Councillor Steve McCabe asked if the pagers also need to be replaced.
“No, the pagers do not need to be replaced. It’s just a case of putting this repeater in that will send the signal into Mount Forest,” said Guilbault.
“We need to have something in place to make sure that if something does break, we have a back up.”
Council approved the recommendation to ask Wellington County to conduct a site audit and feasibility study for a signal repeater at the Mount Forest water tower.
“This will be going through the planning committee of county, which I sit on, so I will try to keep you updated as it proceeds,” said Lennox.
Councillor Sherry Burke was absent.
