Emergency Response Teams Handle Disruptions
A phone service outage on September 21 left all of Cibola, chunks of McKinley, and other parts of New Mexico without cell service. This outage also affected certain internet providers in Cibola,;residents with RedBolt Broadband and Sacred Winds Communications services were unaffected.
Cibola residents were cut off from cell access after an unidentified individual cut a fiber optic line on Interstate 40 near the Pueblo of Laguna.
To protect the residents of Cibola, Sheriff Tony Mace teamed up with Cibola’s Fire Command and Superior Ambulance to ensure safety coverage at the county’s schools. Safety was a priority for the emergency response personnel of Cibola County, with Grants Police and Milan Police increasing patrols to ensure community safety.
Despite the lack of phone access, and with spotty radio connection, first responders across the county remained diligent to keep the community safe. With several agencies saying that the outage took them back to “Old School” ways of working.
Radio service for first responders is spotty, even in the metropolitan areas of Cibola, but it becomes much more difficult – sometimes impossible – to hear radio communications in the more rural parts of Cibola County. To combat this, the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office pulled its deputies that are assigned to the spotty-service areas closer, where their radios would work.
School safety was of major importance to first responders. CCSO and Cibola Fire Command sent deputies and firefighters to each of the rural schools and equipped them with radios so they would have communication with the rest of the community. Grants Police Department gave extra assistance to local schools by increasing patrols and checking in on them periodically with Grants Fire and Rescue. Milan Police Department was short staffed and handling an arrest at the time of the outage, so the Milan Fire Department took a radio to Milan Elementary. This turned out to be a successful operation as MPD was able to respond to a call of a belligerent parent at the school and help calm the situation down.
CCSO sent deputies to Seboyeta Elementary school and did a 911 test from there to see if the phone service was working, when the test failed, they equipped them, and the rest of the county’s outlying schools, with Several businesses across the community lost their ability to process credit and debit cards.
The cell service outage hampered Cibola’s ability to effectively carry out business. Despite this, first responders conquered the challenges and were able to accomplish their missions of keeping the community safe during this time. “I want to thank Mindy Cunningham at the Cibola Regional Dispatch and her whole staff for helping to keep a line open for the community and making the transfer to old school tactics easier,” Sheriff Mace said. While the transition was more difficult than just using cell department issued cell phones, each of the first responders the Cibola Citizen spoke with said that it was fun to do things “the old school way” for a little while. Despite the fun, several first responders remarked on the importance of modern technology, and how just a small disruption can impact the way they operate, “We are comfortable with modern tech, but we are trained for this and are ready when it happens,” Sheriff Mace concluded.