RACOM maintains LMR communications, despite tornado hitting network cores at company headquarters
The fact that these people were able to be sheltered in the women’s restroom played a key role in their safety, Miller said.
“There are several of these two-by-fours that must have been thrown around at 100 miles per hour that are stuck in the side of the stucco of our building like a javelin,” he said. “It’s just crazy.
“The fourth floor, you can see clear through, front to back. The third floor got torn up pretty good, but you can’t see through front to back.”
When the storm calmed, Miller drove to the RACOM headquarters. Normally a five-minute drive, the trip took 30 minutes, because of fallen trees and power lines, he said. Upon arriving at the RACOM building and seeing the damage, Miller said that he feared the worst.
“When I saw it, I thought, one, that maybe we had employees that had died, because of the level of destruction—you’ve seen the pictures, so you can probably understand that,” Miller said. “And the second [thought] was, ‘There’s no way that our P25 or EDACS could survive that catastrophic direct hit.’
“We had 15 employees in the building at the time—it hit at 4:40 in the afternoon, so it was late in the day. They sheltered in place. They were all fine—no injuries. There was some car damage and all of that … But all of the networks—P25 and EDACS—survived, and all of them worked.”
RACOM’s ability to maintain network operations was product of design and some good luck, Miller said.
“We have redundant NEC licensed [microwave] backhaul between the building and the local tower site,” Miller said. “Whether we got fortunate, had good planning, had [good] luck or whatever, that backhaul stayed up the whole time—never dropped, and never faded enough to degrade service.
“We do have fiber backhaul to a couple of our different customers. One is up to Black Hawk County, Iowa, and it stayed running the whole time up there, clear to the Quad Cities of Iowa. So, we did OK, in terms of service continuation.”
