RACOM maintains LMR communications, despite tornado hitting network cores at company headquarters
One problem that has undermined mission-critical networks in the past have been the inability to keep equipment cool in the wake of storms, but that was not an issue for RACOM, according to Miller.
“We were just totally, totally fortunate,” he said. “On the third floor, we have redundant air conditioners—one on the P25 side of the room and one on the EDACS side of the room. The one on the EDACS side of the room was pushed over by the storm. It tipped over, but it was still pushing out cold air—it had fallen and was leaning on one of the EDACS switches, which didn’t impact [the switch’s] operation either.
“So, for a horrible thing like this, a lot of things went right.”
Indeed, even the timing of the tornado proved to be fortunate, Miller said.
“The fourth floor—the one that you can see clear through—is a space that we use normally just use for customer meetings, employee training, customer staging and training, so there was nobody there and was not much on the floor at the time [that the tornado hit on Thursday, July 19],” Miller said. “I had 120 people in a meeting there on Thursday of last week [July 12], so it was just one of those things.”
Meanwhile, all of the unusual circumstances surrounding the tornado incident caused Mike Miller to reflect on his dad, Gene Miller, who founded RACOM in 1972 and died in 2006.
“This building, and the resiliency built in the building, was really his brainchild,” Mike Miller said. “And yesterday, July 19, would have been his 76th birthday. Can you believe that? We have this huge tornado [on Gene Miller’s birthday]—just a strange coincidence.”
