by Rachel Heitzenrater rachelh@myweeklysentinel.com CANTON — Canton Borough has recently installed free wireless internet for the community to use. Sarah Neely of Canton is the Emergency Management Coordinator for Bradford County. She has been working with borough administrator Amy Seeley to get a free Wifi “hub” to Canton for residents in need. “So it all started while we were planning for our schools to be out and realized the need for more support to our families as we are a rural area,” said Neely. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, many families in the area switched to working from an office to working from home, as well as school going to remote learning. “The class room was changing, the homework was changing and we needed to find a way to support that. My office made a resource request to the state for COWS or ‘Celltowers On Wheels’ to help support our families as many transitioned to the work from home setting and our kiddos were learning from home. We knew we wouldn’t be able to support everyone but we had to do something." |
After numerous conference calls and emails, the state finally understood what Neely was saying, with the need in Bradford County.
“Once The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency understood our need they did some research. They were already doing a project of sorts in the western part of the state so the state set up a conference call with me and I talked to them about what our issue was, what our challenges were, and what we were looking to do,” said Neely.
The whole process has been in the works since March. In May, Neely got paired up with ITDRC.
“The state paired us up with the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center, or ITDRC. Together we developed a plan for drive in hot-spots and reached out to our communities in need to see who might be able to support the hardware,” said Neely.
Seeley was the first to volunteer set up, according to Neely, and Canton is the first finished site. Soon after followed LeRoy. They have four other sites who are working with the ITDRC team within Bradford County. The sites are permanent.
ITDRC is a non-profit company funded purely by donations. They are based out of Fort Worth, Texas. ITDRC’s Disaster Tech Task Force is comprised of private sector partners that contribute skilled employee volunteers, products, services, and monetary support for disaster response operations in North America.
“I never let the state forget about our request and pushed for them to get us answers. I’m sure some days I was a pain for them but our residents needed a solution. This might not be hands down the best solution as better broadband is our best bet but this sure will help,” said Neely.
“We are still working on the broadband initiative but this will help support that and bring awareness to ‘the powers that be’ just how rural we are up here and how much we need something better than dial up services,” said Neely.