RED OUTAGE: Critical Communications for Grand Lake Stream region, Townships, and communities.

Friends, Family, Visitors:

As you know, or recently made aware, the Grand Lake Stream region, townships, and communities are feeling the direct effects of Fairpoint Communication's labor dispute that has put this region's safety, and many other surrounding communities like it, into serious jeopardy. We are facing, in fact, experiencing: Level RED critical communication outages.

Also, these outages directly impact the safety, welfare, emergency response communications of our fire departments, emergency first responders, medical, ambulatory care, search rescue organizations, in essence, all public safety related services.

The project, known as " DP944 " under L.U.R.C's permit processing, located in Big Lake Township, driven by the Federal Communications Commission mandates Cellular Service providers to construct, install, and provide radio tower based Cellular Communications, designed to diminish this service gap considerably with critical life saving communications.

This permit process is approaching a 2 year evaluation timeframe  and needs to reach mandatory phase for implementation, to construction very soon, if not Immediate.

No Communications based project should go through this time consuming process, ever. It is absolutley crucial that LURC and it's reporting officials at all levels understand this! 

Impact from loss of landline communications has reached critical levels of importance in terms of personal safety, online services, and public safety communications.

High priority installation of this Cellular Tower project at Big Lake Township will greatly diminish the severity of the situation as well as provide additional services available only with wireless technology, namely GPS tracking, cellphone pinging, remote controlling, all locating tools for search and rescue services. In a nutshell, critical needs for Maine's rural areas.

This tower is also slated for installation of our Public Service radio communication networks. This increase of radio coverage area greatly enhances reliability of our fire departments, police, game wardens, forest rangers, ambulance, first responders who depend entirely on Radio communications for those hard to reach areas. 

This is a without a doubt, an absolute must for us!

In short, action needs to be taken immediatlely to prevent negative impacts towards loss of life, ineffective public safety services, all contributed to lack of effective communications. Hurricane Katrina responders to include Red Cross found this out first hand.

To sum quite simply, the project has stalled due to " cosmetic agenda issues " or " aesthetics to design " and should not even take into account nor receive any weight value to a project as important as this. All " Plant in Place " construction is ready.

It's about saving lives people. That simple, period.

Basically all forms of service provided by critical communications technology can be delivered by Cellular Technology. This is to include Internet services.

Your signature will help us provide the urgent message needed to deliver with high impact, fast results, to move this high priority construction project.

There is no need for a government body such as LURC to take this amount of time, the lack of urgency to complete project, or exercise lack of power to fast track this much needed construction in order to provide this community required communications backup and many other surrounding communities like it that needs this vital service for sustainability / survivability.

I encourage all of you, to include the public safety sector who provide our community with emergency service to weight heavily on support for this effort. 

The proposed site has been granted construction and licensing by the F.C.C so approval on a Federal level is done.

Guaranteed, there will come a time in your life when a medical emergency arises, you will reach for a phone, and your concerns about the appearance of the tower or any other agenda will disappear and realize what you take for granted, is no longer there.

COUNT ON IT.

Please share on your twitter and Facebooks to those with a need to know!

This is a safety sensitive project that trumps all reasoning for it not to happen. Lives are at stake. Demand it. This is primary focus of this petition! 

For information on the project visit DP4944 at:

Maine LURC