Stormy weather in Lincoln, MT makes it more important than ever that rescue personnel have good radio connections. Unfortunately, as KTVH-TV reports, damage to the Stonewall Communications Tower which provides digital service has temporarily limited responders to analog communications.
“The digital radio system that we use in Lewis and Clark County,” said Lincoln Fire Chief Zach Muse, “Now we’re dropping back to an analog channel and it’d be comparable to the new cell phones. And then going back to 1995 with the older cell phones where it’s, you know, scratchy, and if the service isn’t really that good, it’s hard to understand them.” Muse discovered that the host cell tower had been snapped in half due to high winds, leaving the old radio system as the only option for now.
“Temperatures in Lincoln at this time of year frequently hover at least ten degrees below freezing. The weather will need to warm up before repair crews can come out to fix the Stonewall cell tower. So they’re going to [arrive] as soon as the ice comes off and we get a little, you know, 35-degree weather. They’ll climb it, they’ll cut everything, and then they’ll put up temporary antennas,” said Muse. “They’ll put them back up on that base that’s up there, so we won’t have quite as good coverage, but it’ll be probably 90% of what we had before.”
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