CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A power failure at the Corpus Christi Police Department on Wednesday caused 911 emergency calls to go unanswered for about 25 minutes.
Police Chief Bryan Smith said he has no way of knowing how many calls were missed when the power went out about noon.
The outage shut down all dispatch operations, and patrol officers were unable to file reports electronically. Because computers were down they had to communicate via radio with dispatchers.
The department's problems began Monday when a small electrical fire caused officials to evacuate the downtown building and move to the emergency operations center. Emergency services, including half the dispatch staff, continued to operate using generators as a power source at the Corpus Christi Police Department Main Station/Municipal Court Building.
While crews worked Wednesday to replace corroded wires believed to have started Monday's fire, a power surge knocked out the emergency system for the city and county, Smith said.. The backup to the backup failed, he said.
"This caused a catastrophic power failure," he said, adding the outage shut down a server being used by dispatchers both at the station and at the emergency operations center.
During a news conference Smith asked residents to use an alternate phone number, 826-1161. While he spoke, the 911 service was reported restored. He also urged residents to call only with emergencies and use the department's non-emergency line, 886-2600, to report other situations.
The department usually has eight to 10 phones operating at MetroCom for emergency calls, Smith said. The same number of lines were available at the emergency operations center Wednesday, he said.
"All of this should be transparent to the public," Smith said, explaining residents shouldn't see a delay in response time during emergencies while power is being restored.
Not so transparent will be delays in non-essential services while the department is without power.
"We were already having some issues," Smith said. "Now it will be difficult for people to get police reports."
Non-emergency police functions, such as generating electronic police reports, will be put on the back burner while the building operates without full power, he said.
Smith said electricians are trying to figure out what happened but did not know as of Wednesday evening. Once the power is restored, the department will assess whether computer files and systems were damaged.
"We did everything by the book and it went extremely well," Smith said. "I have to listen to the experts, the degreed professionals. Hopefully we will be back on regular power by (this) morning, so that we can start looking at bringing people back into the building."
Monday's fire was caused by corroded wires leading into the building from an underground electrical vault, according to police officials.
"This is a very old building, and so is the wiring underground," Smith said.
Since Monday, crews have been working 16-hour days to repair faulty wiring, said Kevin Stowers, the city's interim director of engineering services. No major structural damage resulted from the fire.
Stowers said the wires being replaced are the circa-1950 building's original.
"The insulation has deteriorated, and copper conductors have corroded," Stowers said.
The 60 circuits being replaced are about 130 feet long and run from a confined transformer vault into approximately 3-inch conduits in the power distribution center of the main mechanical room.
All of the conductors have to be removed from the conduits and replaced with new larger gauge electrical conduits and neutrals, Stowers said. "The problem is, because of debris, sometimes these things don't pull out very easily," Stowers said, referring to the wiring. "All conduits have to be cleaned and swabbed in order to remove debris so the new conductors can be pulled in without being damaged."
Capt. Todd Green said that once the repairs are finished, building maintenance personnel will power up one floor at a time to make sure everything is functional.
"You can't just flip a switch and turn the whole building on," Green said.
Stowers estimates repairs to cost less than $100,000.
"These are not simple jobs," Stowers said. "This is a large electrical service, not a normal household rewire."
Police Capt. Tim Wilson said the department has responded well to the emergency situations on its own turf.
"I've got detectives spread out all over the city," Wilson said. "We surprised ourselves how quick we adapted."
