Thursday, August 24, 2023

Schuylkill County Officials Respond to Outage of Fire Radio Feeds

Schuylkill County Officials have responded to an outage of the popular online fire radio feeds where anyone can listen to fire calls including responding units during incidents.

On Friday, August 18, 2023, the Schuylkill County Fire Radio through Broadcastify and Zello went offline leaving many wondering the cause.  Technical issues had suspended the system several times recently but by Monday, the radio wasn't back online.

Skook News spoke with Scott Krater, director of the Schuylkill County Communications Center, who said the radios were taken offline Friday after an incident in which someone was cursing over the radio during an incident.  The profanity which can be a Federal Communications Commission violation and result in fines or the revocation of an FCC license.

Krater said the radios were taken offline while they develop some policies and procedures for radio use.

This downtime has not impacted any of the radio broadcasting to digital radios owned by fire companies for use during incidents.

No timeframe was specified on when the radio feeds would return.