HANCEVILLE — What appears to have been a direct lightning strike at city hall over the weekend has forced Hanceville to temporarily rely on outside response services and walkie-talkies to assure there are no gaps in its emergency services coverage.

The strike, which witnesses reported around 7 p.m. Saturday, did no structural damage, but sent a surge through the building’s electrical circuitry that essentially wiped out or made inoperable consoles, computers, copiers, fax machines, telephones, and other communications equipment.

The Hanceville City Council held an emergency meeting Thursday to approve the purchase of two new dispatch communication consoles, awarding an $84,784 bid to Sharp Communications and Security Solutions. The property is insured for lightning damage. The emergency meeting and bid award commits the city to paying for the new equipment up front, while awaiting its insurer to reimburse a portion of the cost.

Since Saturday evening, the damaged and destroyed equipment, has forced the police dispatch to communicate with officers in the field via walkie-talkies, and has temporarily sent medical and fire calls through the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office.

City hall houses the central dispatch for all of Hanceville’s law enforcement, fire, and medical emergency call traffic, as well as all the day-to-day communications infrastructure that goes along with conducting municipal business. An insurance adjuster assessed the damage earlier this week.

Mayor Kenneth Nail said no emergency calls have been missed since the lightning strike, but that the city must get its communications setup back at full operational capacity as quickly as possible.

“We haven’t missed a call, but the sheriff’s office is having to tone our fire department and EMS calls,” said Nail. “We’re operating off of walkie-talkies for our police. When it first happened Saturday night, all the E-911 calls were rolled to the county, so we didn’t miss any of those calls. Right now we’re piecemeal with everything to make it work, but we’ve got to get back up and running as quickly as we possibly can.”