RAYNET standby for Calva Bridge comms now cancelled

Monday 30th November 2009  12 Noon

The STANDBY situation for the Calva Bridge has now been CANCELLED.

Following discussions with the Emergency Planning Officer, a risk assessment has taken account of the following considerations:-

1)      BT have indicated they are confident that the re-routing of all communication cables on the bridge will be completed by late evening on Wednesday. The stability of the bridge has not deteriorated since last week.

2)      Any minor disruptions to service, due to swapping over of connections will be covered by EPU staff using the county PMR system. At present, there has been no disruption to the mobile phone networks that can still provide 999 cover for the majority of residents.

3)      Should a larger scale failure still occur, and the EPU were not confident it could be covered by existing EPU staff/Police, they would request RAYNET assistance as a separate incident, using RAYNET equipment and frequencies and accept that there would be a finite time to arrange support for the local North Pennines group.

Can I offer thanks on behalf of the North Pennines group, The Cumbria EPO and myself for all the offers of assistance received and for maintaining a very high level of availability. Our POTENTIAL level of response has impressed many people.

Of course we still need to be aware that we MAY be called in again, but the risk of this is now deemed to be low enough to be able to reduce the current status.

Jon G7JKK