PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY, VA . . . On Sunday, June 30, 2013, Prince William County will have a planned power outage at the George T. Owens Operations Center. The purpose of the outage is so that power upgrades can be completed, which will provide for additional uninterrupted power supplies for the new 800 MHz and public safety Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management systems. Items will start to be powered down beginning at 3 a.m. and will start to be brought back online at noon. The entire outage is expected to last from 3 a.m. to 4 p.m. This outage will affect the County’s website and the website will not be available during this time frame. Residents needing to do business online with the County should plan to do that the day before or after 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 30.
During the outage, the backup 911 system will be in use. Residents should continue to call 911 in case of emergencies and the 911 system will operate as normal. However, as always, if at any time a resident does not get connected to 911, they should call the Police Non-Emergency line at 703-792-6500.
The Public Safety Radio System, as well as the disaster recovery Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, will be operating as normal.
“It is critical for us to add this additional power supply,” said Department of Fire & Rescue Chief Kevin McGee. “It will provide redundancy so that our systems can run without a generator for multiple hours, which will improve the resiliency of our public safety systems.”
“We are looking at this as an opportunity to test our public safety systems during a power outage in a controlled environment,” said Police Chief Stephan Hudson. “This means that we will be better prepared in the unlikely instance that we lose power during an emergency.”
