Cell phone switching facility takes safety seriously

Can you hear me now?

A lot goes into making a phone call happen. But the materials can be dangerous if not handled properly, or when a disaster strikes. On the other hand, some of the heavy equipment can also be used to aid in a natural disaster.

The city’s Local Emergency Planning Committee toured the Verizon Wireless switching facility and distribution site in West Jordan on Dec. i. It’s the site for the mountain region of Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

“This is actually one of the best systems in the state,” Fire Battalion Chief Reed Scharman said.

In the front of the building, there is a box with an information folder just for the fire department, said Michael Trottier, Verizon Wireless Mountain Region Operations Manager.

The group stood in the main AC electrical room with stickers lining the floor, directing the fire department toward the power sources should a fire break out. The equipment is also color-coded, so the fire department would know how to reach that particular power source in the case of a fire.

In the corner of the room sits an FM-200 fire suppression system - basically a giant fire extinguisher.

“It’s a tank, but it doesn’t service this room,” Scharman said. “Rooms are fed by tanks that are in other rooms. So if the fire is in here, it’s not relying on that tank. It relies on a tank in another room.”

A nearby battery room is just what it sounds like -- an entire room of industrial batteries, which provides power for their equipment. But it comes with inherent dangers: hydrogen gas, which is a big offshoot of batteries. Flush stations line the walls. Also, the entire floor sinks down.

“It’s a containment zone,” Trottier said. “If there was a major earthquake, it would hold the battery acid. The little pillows around the batteries also turn a color if there is a battery acid leak.”

A 1.5-kilowatt backup generator powering the entire building is exercised once a week.The automatic transfer switch detects if there is a loss of commercial power or a loss of a phase, and will transfer to generator power.

“That’s the technology that’s getting better and is changing,” Scharman said. “It wasn’t in place for a long time. There was a problem when one phase of power was lost. The computer age has made things a lot better.”

Once it detects that the phase has been restored, it transfers it back to commercial power. If they lose a phase, it will stay on generator until the phase is restored, Trottier said.

In the control room, three men monitored the equipment, making updates and corrections as needed.

“Everything that is out there, they control from in here, or remotely,” Trottier said. “We have remote access. We can be at home on an air card or through our network, and we can control all the equipment out here, make restorations and database changes. There’s a lot of software updating that we do … it’s almost a 24-7 operation.”

Behind the building sits various emergency response vehicles, including access vehicles, four-wheel ATVs and cells-on-wheels, which are mobile cell sites that can be used where cellular network coverage is not present or needing to be expanded, such as in a disaster or sporting event.

“That’s where we have our emergency back up cell sites if there’s a fire, so we get requests from the fire department a lot for fighting forest fires or special events, big events, and we’ll deploy them,” Trottier said.