Power outage briefly redirects Southampton police emergency calls

A series of power failures at the Southampton police department headquarters Saturday night left authorities briefly rushing to redirect emergency calls and get the power system running again, according to town authorities.

The problem started when the PSEG power was lost, Howard Kalb, a captain with the Southampton Police Department, said. Immediately “the generator kicked in as planned,” and ran during the night, Kalb said. But then a coolant line on the generator burst.

That triggered the next emergency contingency plan: 911 calls were rerouted to Suffolk County, and the town’s mobile command center, which runs on gas, became a temporary dispatch center.

Because of this “double redundancy,” said Ryan Murphy, Southampton's emergency response administrator, “no one should have ever even noticed any issues.”

There was “just a little bit of scramble in the meantime,” to be sure all emergency communications systems continued to function, Murphy added.

By late Sunday morning the problem had largely been resolved. The generator was functioning and PSEG was on site working to diagnose the problem and restore power, Kalb said.