Cellphones, computers drowning out emergency pages in Happy Valley
Emergency dispatchers say an abundance of cellphone and Wi-Fi computer traffic is drowning out emergency pages to fire crews in one central Pennsylvania borough.
Centre County 911 Director Dan Tancibok tells WJAC-TV that radio frequency, or RF energy, is so strong in State College that it’s interfering with emergency pages being sent to members of the Alpha Fire Station downtown.
Penn State University is located in State College, and the high rate of cellphone and tablet computer use in the area is literally drowning out in the emergency signals.
Centre County recently upgraded its 911 technology, but that didn’t include improvements to its paging system. But officials plan to add another pager relay site on the Penn State campus, which is near the fire station.
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