CHICKASHA – The public spotlight was trained on emergency services during the recent City Council meeting.
While potentially severe weather was brewing Nov. 3, storm warning sirens failed to sound the alarm at about 3:30 p.m. Fortunately, no tornado developed. Nevertheless, “It was a really bad thing,” Emergency Management Director Edward Perez said.
The next morning “we started trying to track down the problem,” said Fire Chief Tony Samaniego, chief of the Chickasha Department of Fire and Emergency Management Services. The city’s emergency management section “is under my umbrella,” he explained to Southwest Ledger.
“We thought maybe” the emergency alert system “was hit by a lightning strike,” Samaniego said.
But “after a lot of troubleshooting we discovered a time code and figured that more than likely the daylight saving time switch” – when clocks rolled back one hour at 2 a.m. Nov. 3 – “caused the malfunction,” Perez said.
“That was a teaching experience for us,” Samaniego told the council. “We learned a lot from that failure.”
Also during their Nov. 4 meeting, the City Council authorized the purchase of a 2025 Ram 5500 ambulance at a cost not to exceed $385,469. The expense will be reimbursed by the 522 EMS District, according to city records.
The vehicle will be purchased from Emergency Vehicle Sales and Service of Oklahoma, at Blanchard, records indicate.
The new ambulance will replace one “that’s been out of service for a year,” Samaniego said. The department maintains five of the vehicles, he said: three in regular service and two held in reserve.