A brief Wood County communications outage caused by an equipment failure didn’t delay a response for an
ill Otsego student Friday morning.
The incident occurred around 9:25 a.m. at the Linwood Road communications tower.
Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn said that an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) unit at the tower went out, causing
an approximately 10-minute outage in the Fire Comm and Fire Ops communications.
A report of an ill student on an Otsego school bus in the Weston area was taken during the outage.
Wasylyshyn said the sheriff’s office response to that incident was not delayed.
"It’s a different frequency and radio system," he said.
The sheriff also said that a deputy was able to be on scene and inform dispatchers of the situation.
The student was taken to a hospital.
Wasylyshyn said they were able to utilize another outlet at the tower initially to staunch the outage,
and as of 9:50 a.m. the equipment vendor was installing a new UPS unit.
The Linwood Road tower is one of two such communications towers in Wood County.
The second is located on County Home Road.