Monroe County, TN (WOKI / WVLT) – Officials say a battery backup failure knocked out 911 services in Monroe County.

911 calls are being rerouted to other counties like Loudon County.  

Monroe County Emergency Services says the 911 center is powered in different stages: Fort Loudon Electric, battery backups and generator. In the event of a power outage or flicker, the center automatically goes on battery backup to prevent the equipment from going down.

Tuesday, CO2 monitors went off, and there was a smell in the 911 center. The Madisonville Fire Department was called out and discovered a toxic leak and at least two of the backup batteries were overheating.

The defective battery was quickly rising in temperature and had no alarm to warn them but with MFD’s quick assessment the threat was discovered and a plan to remove it was instantly put into place.

The 911 center says the battery backup issue was not something they could have seen coming and stemmed from a problem with the battery itself.

Monroe County Emergency Services – 911 -Facebook Post

As you saw through some of our updates we have been experiencing some technical difficulties at 911. I wanted to take a moment and explain what happened and to hopefully answer any questions that someone may have.

The 911 Center is powered in three different stages 1) Ft Loudon Electric 2) Battery Backup 3) Generator. In the event there is even a flicker of an outage we automatically go on battery backup to prevent the equipment going completely down. This battery backup is a very crucial part of our center. Yesterday there was a strong odor in the building and the CO2 monitors started going off. Madisonville FD was called out and it was discovered that there was a toxic leak and at least two of those backup batteries (that are rather large in size) were overheating. We immediately went into our contingency plan that we utilize in the event of an emergency situation. Our 911 lines were immediately rerouted to McMinn and Loudon Counties. Both counties were given the dispatchers personal cell numbers and our EMA Director Chad Leming brought additional portable radios to us. Our dispatchers were each checked for exposure levels by EMS while the other dispatchers worked from the sidewalk with their portable radios and phones keeping constant communication with McMinn and Loudon 911’s who relayed information to us.

For safety protocol and because the batteries had to be removed by a specific team there were additional fire personnel on scene, including Athens City Fire, Englewood Fire, and Tri-Community FD.

Todd Torbett with Madisonville FD (he is also the Chief of Notchey Creek) did an amazing job with incident command and Chief John Anderson with Sweetwater FD assisted in several ways throughout the day and evening. Monroe County EMS quickly assessed all personnel that were in the building from 911 and the Monroe County Highway Department.

The defective battery had no alarm to warn us and through Chief Torbett’s quick assessment the threat was discovered and a plan for removal was instantly put into place. The battery was quickly rising in temperature and a possible threat of the batteries exploding merited having emergency personnel from fire, EMS and EMA on scene.

I wanted to explain all of this because the citizens that we serve and represent deserved to know what happened and how we handled this situation. I want to assure you that regardless of any situation that all emergency communications at your 911 Center is set up to instantly be rerouted to another agency who will in turn immediately relay this information to us.

This isolated incident with the battery backup is only the fault of defective batteries and could not have been a foreseen situation that we could have stopped.

I want to personally thank McMinn County 911 and Loudon County 911 for all of their hard work and for relaying all requests for emergency assistance without any hesitation. We have an amazing support group with our neighboring 911 Centers and we are extremely appreciative of them. Last but not least, thank you to our IT department who worked many hours into the night helping.

Thank you to our citizens and followers on our page for helping us spread the word when incidents happen and information needs to be shared. We appreciate you all!

April White,

Director