Rome’s Emergency System SPLOST Option

Ever had your government or cops reporter tell you about a story they have coming up soon and ask you to keep a heads up at any spot news situations or otherwise for _________ photo that would go good with their story?

Happens rather frequently around here. And usually by the time they tell us, we have a few days, which is not really enough time unless we get lucky. Last week when Diane told me about her emergency systems story running soon, a light went off in my head and i actually remembered an image for a very memorable fire in Lindale back in April that fit the bill perfectly.

Hooray delightful convenience!

Point…

This November, on the local ballot there is a SPLOST option for a nearly $27 million new emergency communications system. It’s a lot of money, but I can tell you from experience with our current system, dear lord in heaven we need the damn thing. For over 500 square miles of county full of mountains, valleys and rolling hills, we have one tower transmitting all of our emergency communications. One tower.

Most people don’t know where it is, but it’s really rather vulnerable. If something were to happen to that tower with the system as it is now, we’d be in the dark – and it’s happened before. Even when the tower is working properly, there can be problems, especially in bad weather. Such as above, where we’re in a hole in Lindale during an electrical storm at midnight, and the battalion chief took to using his cell phone instead of his radio because he could actually get through to the other side.

We did a story about it when county officials were trying to get the new system passed as a SPLOST option for November’s elections. Since it was approved, now Diane did a detailed story about the proposal and what it entails…

• Emergency system set for SPLOST vote by Diane Wagner

I know five days out of the week I am not allowed to have an opinion, but I’m off today.

This is an important story, and anyone living in the area should know about it, because it affects all of us.

If you want to know how bad it is, we’ve got recording of dispatch communications during the March 2008 tornadoes embedded in the RNT story. Listen to that and tell me an extra penny tax ain’t worth it.