Changes won’t affect continuous emergency service
The Gilmer County Sheriff’s Department (GCSD) will be replacing the uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for its 911 emergency call system on August 16.
Emergency services will still respond to 911 calls during this replacement, Captain Frank Copeland of the Gilmer County Georgia Sheriff’s Office said.
“It will be a seamless transition from one to the next,” he said. “It won’t have any effect on our citizens,” he said.
Normally, Gilmer County’s 911 call center functions off the local power grid.
But if power went out, it would take a few minutes to turn on backup generators, Copeland said.
The UPS functions during these minutes, providing instant backup power.
“It runs the entire 911 center long enough for the generator to turn on,” he said.
If someone called 911 and power went out at the courthouse, the call wouldn’t drop, Copeland said. On the day of the replacement, calls will go through a backup location.
“It will be seamless, and nobody will be able to tell that it’s happened,” he said.
The replacement of the UPS’s operational part will take roughly eight hours, he said.
The current UPS has been in service since 2009 and reached the end of its service life, Copeland said.
A replacement will be a “newer version of the same type of thing,” he said.