A lightning strike during last Friday’s violent storm did an estimated $35,000 worth of damage to the Southold Town Police dispatch room, Chief Martin Flatley said during a town board meeting this morning.
“A lightning strike I believe hit the Sprint tower alongside our headquarters,” he said.
There was some minor water damage in the basement, but it was the lightning strike that did the most amount of damage, knocking out the entire dispatch room for about 20 minutes and leaving dispatchers with one 911 line, he said.
The phone system went down and dispatchers were forced to use portable radios. During the outage 911 calls were automatically transferred to and handled by East Hampton Village. By the end of the day they were able to restore two of the stations, he said.
Despite having all the equipment grounded properly and attached to surge protection, a direct hit is enough to bypass anything they have set up, said Flatley.
The dispatch room had recently undergone a complete renovation and had all new equipment installed after Charles Reichert, owner of IGA supermarkets in Greenport and Southold, donated $340,000 for the upgrades.
One station was completely fried, Flatley said.
“When we talk about a station there are at least three or four computers that run that station,” he said.
Flatley has notified the town’s insurance company, but does not know details about the deductible on the policy.
Out of four stations, two are presently operating, one is totally destroyed and a fourth was never totally set up.
