Baker County 911 system restored

Sheriff Joey Dobson warns it may go down again

BAKER COUNTY, Fla. – The 911 and dispatch systems in Baker County have been restored, but a permanent fix for the emergency system is still being worked out.

Baker County Sheriff Joey Dobson warns they could go down again. He said repair crews are working on a permanent fix.  

The 911 and dispatch system for the entire county went down around 5:50 p.m. Monday evening. That forced information technology workers and emergency operations personnel to work fast to fix the problem.

"We don't believe we've had anything that wasn't able to be handled from here by our deputies that are on the street and the rollover to our non-emergency line," said Dobson.

Dobson said workers were in the emergency operations office when their entire 911 and dispatch system went down. Their local telephone company picked up on the problem and emergency operations personnel and 911 dispatchers immediately began answering phone calls from the county's non-emergency line.

Dobson is not sure how many calls the county missed because of this glitch but said during the two hours the lines were down-- dispatchers successfully responded to the one emergency situation that came in.

The I.T. team is still trying to figure out what happened and Dobson hopes the fix will be simple.

"Were hoping that they're going to be able to tell us that it was equipment failure. Some type of rollover of our router that routes the calls when they come in, whether it's a 911 call-- we hope that's what they're going to be able to tell us. We're hoping it's going to be a permanent fix and that we'll be able to know from that sometime later tonight."

This is the first time something like this has happened to Baker County.

If the systems go down again, people should call 904-259-2231 for emergencies.

"We set this other number up and our dispatchers are handling those calls," Dobson said.