Lightning from Sunday night’s thunderstorm struck the Oxford Village Dispatch Center’s 110-foot tower causing widespread equipment failure and damage.
According to Fire Chief Jack LeRoy, at approximately 9:50 p.m. lightning either struck the tower or the approximate area around the tower.
LeRoy speculated the lightning “might have hit the tower without hitting the antenna” attached to the top of it. He said the lightning may have entered the building through either groundwires or telephone lines.
The strike caused a massive power surge, which “wiped out” the dispatch center’s phone system (for both seven-digit and 9-1-1 calls), the central electronics bank that controls the radio system and damaged a computer.
Head Dispatcher Tony VanHouten said only one of the two radio consoles was damaged. The other console, which serves as a back-up unit, was unaffected.
All 9-1-1 calls were automatically routed to Oakland County Dispatch in Pontiac, which handled Oxford calls until Monday afternoon, LeRoy said.
The seven-digit phone system was back on-line Monday morning
Portable radios were used by both village police and fire personnel until the back-up radio console was brought on-line Monday morning, VanHouten said. The fire department also used cell phones and Nextel two-way radios to communicate, LeRoy said.
The chief estimated the lightning strike did between $10,000 and $20,000 worth of damage, which will be covered by insurance and equipment service contracts.
Phone lines to the village offices also went down and computer damage was sustained, however the extent of it is unknown at this time.
LeRoy said the last time lightning struck the tower was in 1985. The chief said lightning strikes are “not uncommon when you have something metal protruding over 100 feet in the air.”
“You’re inviting lightning,” he said. “It’s really not unusual. Lightning does strike in the same place more than once.”
On Sunday night, “there were six lightning strikes in about a one mile radius within a one-to-two minute span,” LeRoy said. – Editor C.J. Carnacchio