A "fluke" power failure knocked Hamilton County's 911 Center offline for 10 minutes late Wednesday morning.
Director John Stuermer confirmed that the center was unable to answer any calls from 11:45 until 11:55.
He said it was another 15 minutes before the CADs (computer aided dispatch) system was restored. During that time, 911 personnel took down information by writing it on paper, he stated.
Mr. Stuermer said, fortunately, there were no major incidents requiring emergency dispatch during that 10-minute period.
He said, "We only had one complaint - from someone who said they tried to call the switchboard and couldn't get through."
Mr. Stuermer said the failure happened at a time when the 911 Center was switching from its regular power system to a backup generator. He said it must do so on a weekly basis in order to test the backup system.
He said a battery set is supposed to kick in to bridge the gap between the regular system and the backup generator. He said there are two batteries so if one should fail, then the other one would take over.
In this case, he said, both batteries were found to have damaged cells. He said they had been tested the previous week and were working fine.
Mr. Stuermer said, "It was one of those fluke, unreal things that both the batteries failed."
He said the center did all it could be stay online and just had the rare double battery failure. He said, "In all honesty, nothing else could have been done."
Mr. Stuermer said there was a full crew on hand to quickly get the server room back into operation on the generator.
He said the center stayed on generator power until late that evening, then switched back to regular power.
He said as an extra pre-caution the 911 Center will be ordering replacement batteries.
That cost is expected to be between $40,000 and $50,000.