Nashville Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell, who represents the downtown area, said the city must also follow up on how to create more redundancy in critical communication systems in the aftermath of the bombing.
“How does a city as a whole function if we go through something like this again or a natural disaster?” he said. “We learned our systems are not redundant enough when one major provider goes offline.”
Police officers on the scene Friday were issued burner phones, according to Metro police spokesperson Don Aaron. Nashville’s police department uses FirstNet network, a priority network for first responders to use on existing AT&T cell towers for voice and data.
Nashville’s 911 line remained operational but officials were without access to administrative phone lines through Friday evening, according to Stephen Martini, director of the Nashville Department of Emergency Communications.
In the absence of non-emergency phone lines, residents were encouraged to request services through hubNashville online, which officials monitored for a three-day period.
Martini said communications to emergency personnel via radio was never impacted over the weekend.
He declined to share details on how the department remained operational, citing sensitive public safety information, but said a redundancy plan, dubbed the PACE method (Primary, Alternate, Contingent, Emergency), was in place.
Nashville’s director of information and technology services, Keith Durbin, said Verizon phones had to be driven to some staff on Christmas Day.
“This was one of the worst case scenarios that happened,” Durbin said. “… To have (AT&T)completely taken out … was even broader impact than we thought.”
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