SIMI VALLEY : City Hopes Rug Will End Static
Simi Valley officials hope that re-carpeting the city’s police dispatch center with a static-eliminating rug will keep 911 emergency calls from disconnecting.
Calls to the Police Department have been plagued with low volume and disconnections for two years, said dispatcher Mike Homsy, and although Pacific Bell has been unable to pinpoint the cause, officials say static could be part of the problem.
“Sometimes we can’t hear people, and they can’t hear us,” Homsy said. “And it’s not too frequent . . . but (sometimes) it just disconnects.”
The Simi Valley City Council on Monday approved spending $700 to re-carpet the 24-hour operations center. If that fails to work, the city’s emergency phone equipment will be replaced within two months, city officials said.
The existing carpet is not static-eliminating and the city has not provided each work station with static-free floor mats to prevent the transfer of static electricity from the air to the equipment, a Pacific Bell representative said.
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