Dispatchers Answer Hundreds Of Call After Edmond Earthquake

Thursday, August 3rd 2017, 10:34 pm

By: News 9

View after camera view at the Edmond fire station near the epicenter at Covell and Air Depot showed shaking, then darkness.

Wednesday night’s 4.2 magnitude earthquake was followed by power outages. And at the Edmond dispatch center, hundreds of calls rolled in after that.

“It’s horrible! It’s shaking down our house!” One caller said.

“Yes ma’am. Yeah, we felt it too.” The dispatcher replied.

“They have to stop! Stop this fracking! It has to stop!” The caller continued.

“Ma’am, we don’t have anything to do with the fracking, OK?” The dispatcher said.

While some called in a panic, they had no true emergency to report.

“I’ve got other 911 calls ringing so I’m going to have to let you go to answer those,” the dispatcher explained.

“We don’t want to be in the business of discouraging people from calling 911 if they feel like there is a need. We just, in those situations, we want to try to eliminate the non-emergency calls in that situation, and just have it solely be for emergency purposes,” said Jenny Wagnon with Edmond Police.

Almost simultaneous with the quake, two Edmond Electric Substations went down. “Hi, um, earthquake,” a caller said. “No electricity, no power, nothing.”

And the outage reporting line customers are urged to use, is forwarded to the 911 center after hours. This made for a busy night for dispatchers.

“We just had a horrible earthquake – the worst earthquake we’ve had in I don’t know when. It knocked out all the electricity,” said another caller.

City officials said there were pressure changes at the two substations, triggering a failsafe.

But power was restored in about an hour.