The tower at the Starke County Sheriff’s Department sustained damage in yesterday’s storms and crews are on the scene repairing that damage.
“The wind took out the first 60 or 80 feet of the tower, it totally bent it over,” said Starke County Commissioner Dan Bridegroom. “What we’re going to do today (Wednesday) is try to remove the antennas that were on the tower and then take about a 60 foot section off the tower and see if we can replace the antennas to get the coverage throughout the county. This will be the remedy until we get a new tower.”
Bridegroom said only one department is experiencing communication disruptions.
“The only thing that is disrupted right now is the highway garage. Transmission from this tower bounced all the communications for the highway department. The internet, the phones – everything bounced out there. 911 and everything is working. Joe Short, our IT Director, has got everything in hand there as well as Ted Bombagetti. That was the first thing we got on yesterday morning. We wanted to make sure that the emergency systems worked.”
Bridegroom isn’t sure when repairs will be complete.
“That I can’t answer right now. We’re waiting for the telephone companies to get back to us. We’re going to have to change the system we’ve been operating under for the short term. We hope this will be back up today or tomorrow so we will be able to bounce signals out to the highway garage.”
