Aug 6, 2010 By Josh Krysak 5 min read

The Fayette County 911 center is back online today after officials scrambled to maintain emergency call service for area residents after the generator at the center in Uniontown shut down early Thursday, forcing call center staff to temporarily set up shop in Dunbar Township. Electricity was restored to the center and all 911 lines were successfully rerouted back to the Uniontown center around 5:45 p.m. Thursday, according to Fayette County 911 spokeswoman Susan Kozak-Griffith.

Roy Shipley Jr., director of the Fayette County Emergency Management Agency, said that the 911 Center lost power around 7 p.m. Wednesday after wicked weather swept across the district.

“The power went down and our generator kicked in so we were OK,” Shipley said, noting that he immediately notified Allegheny Power of the outage.

Shipley said the call center located in the Fayette County Public Safety Building remained fully operational throughout the night Wednesday but said that a power surge around 7:30 a.m. Thursday caused the generator to falter and left 911 dispatchers unable to field emergency calls.

“We then transferred our calls to the Fayette County Emergency Management Agency (FCEMA) where we set up this operation to field incoming emergency calls,” Shipley said, noting the remote call center was established at FCEMA headquarters at the Joseph A. Hardy/Connellsville Airport.

While the transfer was being conducted, Shipley said that all police calls were being routed through the state police station in Uniontown and then dispatched to the corresponding municipal police departments.

He said that additionally, dispatchers had to cease sending tone messages to alert fire stations regarding calls because the system could not be used outside the downtown 911 center.

During the outage, Shipley said he had called Allegheny Power three separate times to report the situation and was given little information by utility officials.

A spokesman from Allegheny Power said he would look into the matter regarding the 911 center but did not return a call for comment regarding the outage at the center.

Shipley said the fast-moving storm caused flash flooding in some areas and said that the center logged nearly 300 calls in a three-hour span from 5 to 8 p.m. at the height of the storm.

“We normally log between 150 and 200 calls for an average eight-hour shift evening shift,” Shipley said, adding that as storm damage reports increased and phone lines remains jammed, 911 officials continued to call in support staff throughout the night.

He said that downed trees and power lines were reported across the county and said that the hardest hit areas seemed to be the Uniontown-to-Brownsville corridor, with several homes sustaining wind and storm damage and multiple fires associated with lightning strikes were reported.

Electric services remains patchy across the county, with as many as 12,000 customers still without electricity.

Many traffic lights in Uniontown, South Union Township, North Union Township, Menallen Township and Redstone Township remained dark Thursday morning as electrical repair crews worked to restore power.

Uniontown police said they were called to multiple burglar alarms set off by the electrical outages, including one at a bank on Main Street Thursday morning.

Uniontown officials posted temporary stop signs at some of the city’s busiest intersections where traffic lights were down to try and provide an additional layer of safety.

“We just encourage area motorists to use extra caution when traveling downtown as some lights remain out,” city police Chief Jason A. Cox said. “We are hopeful that they will be operational soon and traffic can resume normal patterns.”

Jeff Marshall, Greene County Emergency Management director, said that the storms also walloped Greene County Wednesday evening.

He said that there were trees and power lines down throughout the county and that 3,000 residents remained without power Thursday morning.

Some power outages and storm damage also were reported in Washington County.

Shipley said that typically, the 911 center in Fayette County could have remained operational indefinitely on generator power and added that the generator manufacturer sent a repair crew to the 911 center to inspect the machine Thursday.

He said that even though the generator was functioning properly again shortly before noon, he decided to keep the makeshift center at the FCEMA building open and running until full power was restored.

Shipley said that the FCEMA mobile command center also was up and operational Thursday in case of any additional electrical difficulties.

According to the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, rain totals in many areas of Fayette County were around an inch to an inch and a half from the storm, with the heaviest rain falling in the northern portions of the county.

Meteorologists said that the high humidity and the unstable atmosphere was the main cause of the strong storms Wednesday evening.

Allegheny Power reported a total of 263 separate reports of outages affecting more than 12,000 customers, or more than 16 percent of all residences and businesses served by the utility company in Fayette County.

It will take until Saturday to fully restore power to the county, according to the utility company’s Web site.