Storm knocks out power at CenCom

BENTONVILLE — Benton County Central Communications lost electricity when a storm rolled through Friday night, a county official said Monday.

Robert McGowen, county administrator of public safety, said he was notified at 7:27 p.m. Friday that Central Communications, commonly called CenCom, was on generator power. Central Communications lost the generator power at 7:55 p.m., he said.

Central Communications is in the basement of

the County Administration Building downtown.

“The power outage occurred because the generator quit running after 15 minutes,” McGowen said. “When the generator failed, the battery backup used all of its power and failed.”

The generator vendor had someone on the scene within 15 minutes of being notified and restarted the generator, McGowen said. The battery backup system failed to reset after the generator restarted. A manual reset of the battery backup system restored power and Central Communications was back online at 9:05 p.m., he said.

The vendor was on site Monday trying to determine why the generator failed, McGowen said. County officials are in the process of getting a quote to replace the battery backup system.

During the time Central Communications was without power, 911 calls were transferred to Bentonville, McGowen said. Dispatchers had handheld radios and were able to communicate with police, fire and emergency medical service agencies, he said.

Bryan Beeson, county facilities administrator, said a fence between the Juvenile Justice Center and the Road Department in Bentonville was knocked over, and a wall at the county Road Department building in Decatur was damaged by the storm. There was no damage estimates at either location and contractors were scheduled to visit both sites Monday, he said.