Northwest Indiana Discussion

Crown Point it appeares recieved the greatest amount of storm damage Saturday afternoon. Trees down everywhere, power out in downrtown section and all points south for about a mile. From a short investigation, I think they will call it wind shear or heavy forced winds. It didn't appear to be a tornadoe. The path of the store was extremly wide. A lot of roof damage from trees crashing them in. Only one gas station had power in town and the line of cars was nearly a block long waiting to fillup. Cell phones if you could get responce, were only excepting emergemcy calls. The majority of the cell towers in town were knocked out.Main street south of the old courthouse was blocked for several blocks.

Cell phones if you could get responce, were only excepting emergemcy calls.

Now that's a new one on me! Guess I shouldn't be surprised but who is to say what an "emergency" actually is in such a case. If this limits calls to 911 are you now to call 911 about live power lines on the ground? And if you have kids with a sitter and you need to confirm that all is well so you don't have to drive through hazardous conditions to get there ASAP IMO should count as a 2nd class emergency.

This brings up an idea. If the cell towers are limiting calls to 911 just because it no longer has the capacity to handle regular capacity then maybe there should be a procedure to allow calls to home with a 3 min time limit for a wellness check and encourage people to not abuse the purpose of the limit by repeatedly re-calling. Just an idea. After all cell towers going down during storms happen everywhere all the time. It's not that rare and now that more people all the time are opting away from the traditional land line the cell call availability is becoming ever more important.