Stephen Kennedy, Assistant County Administrator for Sumter County
Claiming 109 lives across 19 Florida counties, Hurricane Ian was one of the deadliest storms in recent history. It made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 18, 2022, causing wide-scale destruction in Cuba before strengthening to a Category 4 storm as it struck the west of Fort Myers. It made its way through the Sunshine State, and didn’t recede until it eventually hit South Carolina.
The impact of Ian was brutal. Torrential rain, tremendous winds and the sheer strength of the storm surge ravaged infrastructure and left millions of residents homeless. In total, the damage is expected to amount to more than $60 billion. At one point, nearly one fifth of all cell sites were out of service. Just 1,380 miles away, 11 million Puerto Rican residents were left without power. Yet, here in Sumter County, at the height of the hurricane, we were still able to relay vital messages across our emergency services. The county’s two-way radio communications stayed intact. How? We used a cloud-hosted fallback service for our public safety radio system.
In previous storms, Sumter County has been met with lighter winds, so traditionally we’ve been a place of refuge. However, we still exercise extensive hurricane preparedness - assessing potential hazards, practicing for an event and ensuring resources are in place. In a severe weather situation, the Emergency Operations Center—essential on any given day—becomes our pulse: fielding 911 calls, allocating resources, communicating with personnel in the field, creating a plan.
As a county, we’re very much invested in public safety, and anything that impacts our communication capabilities jeopardizes this, putting people and property at risk. Without reliable communication, response can become chaotic: public safety answering points can become compromised leaving us with no ability to route calls or share information with neighboring counties.
It’s vital that in an extreme weather emergency, communication is prioritized. For those out in the field, that means having a backup radio system that behaves in the same way as the standard one. In an emergency, we want our teams to be focused on the mission, not the technology. In 2021, we invested in Motorola Solutions’ CirrusCentral Core, a cloud-based secondary core to improve the resiliency of our P25 land mobile radio system. And for a secure and reliable connection, Motorola set up a redundant private IP network linked to their cloud. Although on-premise LMR networks are incredibly resilient, they can sometimes fail in the event of a direct hit by a major storm. Should the primary on-premise core system face major failure, the secondary core takes over, providing continuity in radio communications, ensuring dispatch can still operate without disruption. The cloud core gives us that backup option with a similar user experience for our responders.
Motorola Solutions had already equipped us with our P25 radio system, but constructing a physical backup site was cost prohibitive. Our master site had always been a single point of failure, and we’d been concerned about vulnerabilities for years. We use a shared emergency communication system, supporting multiple agencies throughout the county, so security is also a priority. Prior to switching to the cloud, the team at Motorola Solutions walked us through its cybersecurity aspects, ensuring we understood the mechanisms in place to protect our equipment and communications. For the team here at Sumter County, we felt it was better to work with an organization focused on addressing evolving security trends, rather than trying to tackle them on our own. When they suggested a cloud-hosted solution, it was the opportunity to resolve a long-term issue. It’s never been a traditional customer-vendor relationship between us, it’s a partnership. They’d worked with us to support and improve our systems, long after the initial deployment.
As a publicly-funded entity, securing buy-in for new technology purchases can be challenging, but there were a few factors that helped us get the go ahead. Firstly, improved safety is a priority. Whether it’s a routine response or a natural disaster, in a post-incident review, communication is central because it impacts so many other outcomes on the day. Being able to demonstrate to our partners that the cloud would enhance the resilience of our communications was crucial. Secondly, seamless implementation is a must have. The team at Motorola Solutions assured us that transitioning to a cloud solution would be straightforward, and on transition day, the team reported no break in service. Just as expected, radio communications weren’t impacted and field personnel continued to provide emergency services without interruption or distraction. Finally, it was cost effective. Motorola Solutions offered us a flexible subscription-based cost model that eliminated a large capital investment.
It wasn’t until the early hours of September 28 last year that the cloud secondary core would prove to be invaluable. As Ian advanced, we became aware that we could be in ‘the cone’—the path of destruction. We had daily phone calls to assess the potential impact and began to mobilize an emergency team, allocate resources, and inspect our equipment. Our round-the-clock staff were not only dealing with the initial impact - opening shelters and giving people the opportunity to reach them - but planning the recovery process.
As Hurricane Ian made its way across the gulf, Sumter County wasn’t directly hit, but it brought high winds and flooding—and our communications faced the ultimate test. The 911 calls started—trees had hit houses and there was damage to utility lines, leaving around 5,000 residents in blackout. Emergency personnel were actively responding to a variety of storm-related calls for service across the county. Next the building housing the master P25 core lost power. Generators were activated, but they weren’t transferring power to the equipment. The backup batteries eventually depleted and caused the core radio equipment to shut down. It was then that the cloud core activated. Our dispatchers noticed just a momentary loss of dispatch communication as CirrusCentral Core took control. Our responders in the field were unaware. They remained focused on delivering an emergency response to a community under threat. No switching channels. No lag. No missing messages. Communications between the teams were uninterrupted and remained loud and clear.
Braving the storm, on-call technicians were dispatched to investigate the outage. They found the breaker switch had blown and the master site was completely dead. Without the cloud backup core, the sites would have dropped down to site trunking, limiting county-wide communication. Thankfully, this wasn’t an issue. The technicians were able to restore power to the equipment and reactivate the on-site P25 core.
We think of CirrusCentral Core like an emergency exit in a building. You have your everyday exit locations, but you always give yourselves an alternative, should the worst happen. If your radio loses communication with its primary core, it finds another audio path between the radio sites and dispatch, without the need for additional buildings or equipment. As natural disasters continue to grow in intensity and severity, it’s essential that we’re prepared.
About the Author
Since 2019, Stephen Kennedy serves as the Assistant County Administrator of Sumter County. Previously he served as the Public Safety Director and Deputy Chief of the Sumter County Fire Department.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management from Warner Southern College, a Master of Public Administration degree from Jacksonville State University and a Master of Science in Computer Systems and Software Design from Jacksonville State University.
