Police communications impacted by Austintown power outage

The big power outage Sunday night in the Austintown area not only cut service to hundreds of homes, but it knocked out the county’s radio system for law enforcement.

It happened just before 8 p.m. and affected a tower on Barrington Avenue in the township.

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The outage forced local police agencies all over the county to switch to other, older radio frequencies as well as cell phones and computer-aided dispatching to handle calls.

Austintown Police Chief Bob Gavalier said the issue was due to their battery backup system.

“And the way it’s supposed to work, the battery backup kicks in, then the backup generator kicks in a minute later to keep the system running but because the battery backup didn’t keep the system up until the generator kicked on, it flipped a switch up there and the whole system went down,” he said.

It took about three hours for a technician to get the system back online.

Gavalier said although new battery equipment was ordered more than a month ago, ongoing supply chain issues have held up the shipment. He said he hopes it will arrive this week and get installed.