[Scan-DC] The Danger of Missing Signals

[James Richardson]

 From today's Wall Street Journal.

Firefighters, Police Lack Links
Because of Spectrum Problems
Emergency Responders at Same Sites
Still Often Can't Radio to Each Other

By KARA SCANNELL and ANN DAVIS
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Even as smoke was still rising from the attacks on the World Trade 
Center and the Pentagon, security and safety officials were focusing 
on serious weaknesses in communications that stymied rescue efforts. 
Firemen were trapped in the burning Twin Towers partly because they 
never received police-department messages warning that the buildings 
might collapse. At the Pentagon, radio traffic was so overwhelmed 
that foot messengers were the best means of communication.

Now, a year and half later, similar communications flaws are still 
evident, and not only in New York and Washington. In city after city, 
police and firefighters still face huge problems communicating with 
each other during an emergency. This lack of so-called 
interoperability "is a huge problem across the country," says Robert 
Gurss, outside counsel to the Association of Public-Safety 
Communications Officials. "There are short-term fixes. ... But they 
really aren't long-term solutions."

Part of the problem is a dispute within localities over how much 
interoperability is necessary. Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of New 
York City's Police Department, says communication should be limited 
to key people who can then dispatch information to their respective 
units on the ground. "The communications need among agencies at the 
lowest level is overblown," he says. During a major crisis, he says, 
more people talking could worsen the confusion.

There is also the matter of cost. In some large cities, overhauling 
the system would require buying new radios for tens of millions of 
dollars -- more than most state, local and city budgets can afford.

The principal reason, however, is an insufficiency of available radio 
airwaves, known as spectrum. Different public-safety agencies in the 
same city often operate on different channels within different 
"bands." Consequently, police and firefighters can't talk to each 
other and warn of life-threatening risks. The problem can be even 
worse in suburban areas, where scores of local agencies, each on a 
different band, might serve a relatively large geographic area -- 
without the ability to communicate.

"Every public-safety system across the country has been [set up] 
individually, at different times at different technologies and 
different frequencies," says Jeff Arnold, deputy legislative director 
at the National Association of Counties.

As fears of another terrorist attack mount, so does the urgency to 
effect interoperability among local agencies -- even in New York 
City, where police and fire agencies, long notorious for their turf 
wars, have taken strides to work together since 9/11. Today in New 
York, a fire chief is stationed at police headquarters and vice 
versa. Fire captains are now permitted in police helicopters, which 
are equipped with the fire department's radio system, to gain a 
better view of a blaze. And an officer is dispatched to the scene of 
every two-alarm or higher fire.

Last month, the New York City fire department rolled out a new radio 
system that operates on a higher frequency than its old one. The new 
hand-held radios produce a signal that can penetrate buildings better 
and have more channel capacity and safety features. The new radio 
also puts firefighters on the same frequency as the police department 
so a dispatcher can monitor transmissions over one shared channel. 
Also, select fire chiefs are using portable radios that are 20 times 
as powerful as their old ones. But firefighters still cannot 
communicate directly with police officers at the same scene.

Establishing complete interoperability between departments doesn't 
appear to be on New York's near horizon. Even if the city decided it 
wanted all of its firefighters to have the ability to communicate 
with all of its police officers, there wouldn't be enough spectrum to 
simply move one to the band used by the other. And, even if extra 
space were available, such enhanced communications could cost a 
bundle in new radios needed to operate on the new spectrum.

James Kallstrom, the former head of the Federal Bureau of 
Investigation in New York and a senior adviser to New York Gov. 
George Pataki for counterterrorism, says law-enforcement agencies 
have found that "you can't turn around in a year and re-establish and 
rebuild radio systems. These are long-term projects." He says police 
and fire departments across New York state are experimenting with 
temporary solutions or trading each other's radios so that 
representatives from each department have each other's radios in 
command vehicles.

Federal officials have recognized the shortage of spectrum: Congress 
voted in 1997 to require TV stations to give up their analog share of 
the spectrum in the so-called 700-megahertz band by the end of 2006, 
if 85% of the public has access to digital television. There are 
bills before Congress that would make that spectrum available to 
public-safety agencies in 2006 regardless of how many homes have 
digital TV.

The Federal Communications Commission is also exploring the use of 
other potentially underutilized bands of spectrum for public safety. 
One potential solution: Nextel Communications Inc. is proposing a 
plan that would free up additional spectrum for public-safety 
agencies in the 800-megahertz band. (Other wireless carriers are 
fighting the proposal, because it would effectively increase Nextel's 
calling capacity.)

For now, short-term fixes seem to be the rule. In Washington, D.C., 
truck-mounted translators that connect different radio systems have 
been set up along the Beltway for use in emergencies. In 
Charlottesville, Va., the fire department's radios are so congested 
that it has equipped its fire engines with Nextel mobile phones to 
enable firefighters to talk to one another. Charles Werner, deputy 
chief of the department, installed the phones in fire engines and 
handed them out to every chief.

Before the mobile phones, "we either did it over the main radio or we 
couldn't communicate at all," Mr. Werner says. His radio commands 
would sometimes be overridden by radio traffic from Baltimore County, 
Md., 150 miles away. "A lot of radio traffic was constantly 
overriding us," he says.

The Nextel phones that Charlottesville uses offer the carrier's 
walkie talkie-like feature called "Direct Connect," which allows 
users to speak to other Nextel users without experiencing the delay 
of dialing a phone number. "We're able to talk on the Nextels as 
opposed to the radio, which stays open for emergency traffic," Mr. 
Werner says. But that still hasn't solved the problem of 
communicating between emergency-service and police units, which all 
operate on different bands and frequencies. Mr. Werner estimates it 
would cost Charlottesville $13.3 million to fully upgrade its radio 
system. The Nextel system offers a lower-cost near-term solution: $40 
a month for each of the 24 phones used by his department.

Indiana and Michigan are putting in statewide systems on an 
800-megahertz frequency that would be open to as many agencies as 
possible, and Michigan is nearly done, Mr. Gurss said. South Dakota 
operates on the same frequency from the federal to local level.

But one of the key stumbling blocks remains cooperation -- and a 
community's will. "People have to want to do it and talk to others to 
make change," says Robert E. Lee Jr., director of the Public Safety 
Wireless Network, a program sponsored by the U.S. Departments of 
Justice and Treasury.

--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---