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5/15/2000 Itronix Wireless Notebook Computers Become Sheriff Department’s Lifeline Following Ft. Worth Tornado With Radio System Overloaded and Cell Phones, Pagers, and Telephones Out, Tarrant County Sheriffs Rely on Itronix X-C 6250 Pro‘ To Provide Critical Disaster Communications FT. WORTH, TX—(May 15, 2000)—In one skyscraper alone, over 3,200 windows were blown out or damaged in seconds. Cars were thrown in the air like children’s toys, landing on each other in jumbled heaps. Shards of glass and other debris were impaled edgeways into concrete walls at 150 mph. "It was like a something out of one of the ‘Terminator’ movies," said Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Rob Durko. No one in Ft. Worth had ever seen anything like it before. On Tuesday, March 28, 2000, at 6:45PM, a series of major tornadoes slammed into the Ft. Worth metropolitan area, damaging hundreds of homes and businesses and killing five people. One of the largest of the tornadoes, a Force Two packing winds in excess of 140 mph, ground a half-mile-wide trough through the city’s central business district, wreaking havoc with some of the city’s most sophisticated and important commercial structures. The force of the twister knocked out the city’s main telecommunications and electrical grids within 15 minutes, nearly paralyzing the community’s emergency management network. Lt. Durko, Communications Director for the Sheriff’s Department, realized that the situation would quickly become critical. In near total darkness, with broken electric wires emitting showers of sparks and rubble littering city streets, he drove to the Ft. Worth Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to help organize communications for the city’s inter-departmental disaster teams. "By the time I reached the EOC, [telephone] land lines were down, cellular phones were inoperable, and pagers were out," said Durko. "The 800 megahertz radio system, which our department shares jointly with other safety departments, was peaking out from heavy use, causing intermittent overloads and sometimes failing altogether." In an attempt to find an alternate means of communication, Durko powered up his Itronix X-C 6250 Pro‘ wireless notebook computer. The X-C 6250 Pro, a ruggedized mobile workstation, is carried by Durko and 45 of the department’s squad vehicles, and is primarily used for mobile data computing. Now, however, the lieutenant was anxious to find if the wireless-enabled unit would be one of the last communications tools still available to the deputies and other personnel on duty in the field. "I sent a message and immediately got through," said Durko. "Within minutes, the X-C 6250 Pro became the Sheriff Department’s primary link in coordinating its disaster relief and public safety efforts." Using the X-C 6250 Pro, Durko and his fellow senior officers directed the setup of a field command post at Farrington Field, a sports facility immediately adjacent to the downtown area. Before long, the department’s Patrol, Criminal Investigations, and Warrants Divisions were all working and sharing information together via the X-C 6250 Pro. Elsewhere in the EOC, communications were so disrupted that supervisors had no visual confirmation of the damage caused by the tornadoes. "The cable TV feed had gone down, and since the EOC was in a concrete and steel building, we had no way of picking up the local TV news reports," Durko said. "I downloaded some video footage onto the X-C 6250 Pro that had been posted onto the Web site of one of the local TV stations, then played it over a video projector in the EOC. It was the first time supervisory personnel were able to actually see the extent of the damage to the buildings downtown." Throughout the night, the Sheriff’s Department and other authorities relied on the X-C 6250 Pro network for important transmissions, receiving information and delivering orders via the "chat room" made possible by the workstation’s wireless communications technology. "We run a Cerulean Packet Cluster message switch on AT&T’s Cellular Digital Packet Network over the X-C 6250 Pro, which creates a totally encrypted solution," noted Durko. "The system never failed, and never bogged down despite the heavy use." By 6AM the next morning, cell phones and pagers had started to come back, and the downtown area was largely secure. For over 10 hours, the Itronix X-C 6250 Pro had been the Department’s lifeline. "We knew that the X-C 6250 Pro was a valuable emergency management tool, but now we’re even more aware of how vital it can be," said Durko. The whole county network is aware of the essential role this computer played. When a crisis hit, the X-C 6250 Pro made all the difference." About the Itronix X-C 6250 Pro: The X-C 6250 Pro, which has won the prestigious PC Week "Best of Comdex" Award and Customer Support Management’s AFSMI "Best of Show" Award, is designed to function in the harshest of conditions and use, and features a magnesium alloy casing and fully ruggedized internal components toprotect the unit from exposure to rain, dust, shock, vibration, and extreme temperature fluctuations ranging from -4o to 140oF. It features a new 266MHz GXm processor, standard 64 MB RAM, and 10 GB storage. The workstation also has a new Colorvue‘ SVGA display viewable in direct sunlight, and a Nitevue‘ keyboard that enhances the viewing capacity of the keyboard in dark environments. Its integrated wireless data communications capabilities include CDPD/Cellular, Motient (ARDIS), or Bell South Wireless Data radio networks. For more about the X-C 6250 Pro, visit www.itronix.com/products. About Itronix: Itronix designs, manufactures and deploys mission-critical wireless, rugged computing devices that maximize the productivity of mobile applications in markets such as public safety, field services, telco , utilities, government, aerospace, geophysical surveying, and meter reading. Itronix is a subsidiary of Dynatech Corporation, a Burlington, MA based global communications equipment provider focused on leading-edge communications technology solutions. Itronix worldwide headquarters are located in Spokane, Washington. The corporation's European operations, Itronix Ltd., are located in Coventry, UK. Additional information can be found on Itronix' Web site at http://www.itronix.com. |
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