Dave wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...

Michael Coslo wrote:

wrote:

Michael Coslo wrote:

Don't agree. First responders are not "radio operators", they're
firefighters, medics, police at multiple levels and all the rest. Given
a big enough disaster like the New Orleans hurricane onsite FEMA
operatives, the Coast Guard, any number of military units from all the
services also land in the middle of it.


I must not have made myself clear Brian. The answer is not in freeing
up the BW now occupied by analog television. The answer for
communications in a disaster is trained and competent operators.

I agree with all that.


And the trained operators should be called in when the regular comms
first go out, not after a few days.

I don't agree here - depending on what I think you mean by "trained
operators". Local governments can't train and store reserve
dispatchers who are only activated for drills in preparation for major
emergencies, won't work. Emergency dispatching is an art and skill
which has to be used on a very regular basis or the dispatchers lose
the edge they need to do the job properly when a "big one" hits
unexpectedly.

In those cases the local authorities can call up all shifts of their
regular crews to get a sufficient amount of manpower and their reserve
radios on the air. But in order to get any benefit out of an approach
like this the dispatch centers have to be able to almost immediately be
expanded and able to keep operating thru hell and high water for an
extended period. None of those type facilities are in place that I've
ever heard about.


What I think should happen is the development and deployment of some
sort of "super" emergency operations centers staffed by highly trained
dispatchers who know how to seamlessly patch the first responder
specialists making the initial call into the specific specialists they
need to contact.

I doubt that there will be the money for that. Good idea tho'.

A couple $80 million civil AWACs planes and $10 million a year to
maintain and staff 'em is chicken feed. Problem is that Haliburton will
have already drained the till before Boeing and Motorola get their
passes at it.


- Mike KB3EIA -

w3rv



it seems like the key is that there is no bridge between the various
agencies that can coordinate the activities. the red herring is that their
radios can't talk to each other.

Yup. It is a function of bandwidth, distance, congestion and other
stuff like that.



in most metro areas there are adequate
frequencies and equipment to coordinate the local activities, and plenty of
dispatchers to do the job... keeping them on the air during a disaster may
be a problem that could be addressed, but its not a frequency allocation
question, its more of making sure they have adequate facilities and backups.
I would bet that most police and fire and even local emergency operating
center personnel would agree that they would not want the feds showing up
and starting to talk to them on their existing frequencies, they are going
to be busy enough with their own work and don't need an outside group
showing up trying to 'help' them who isn't familiar with their normal
operating procedures, the area, the people, and all that other stuff.

what would appear to be needed is a way for fema, national guard, coast
guard, etc to get coordinated with the local authorities... and to do that
there are really 2 or 3 levels of coordination needed:

There is a way. Exists right now. The problem in this particular
disaster is that the emergency services lagged way behind the disaster.


1. planning, pre-positioning, testing, training, all that stuff that happens
BEFORE a disaster. all the plans in the world are great until you walk into
the eoc and can't plug in your equipment because the connectors are wrong,
or the local official starts talking about doing one thing and the plan you
have in hand calls for something else.
2. strategic coordination... that high level, big area, stuff... the
governor's level decisions vs feds and national agencies about when to send
them in, where and when are they to take over operations and who has over
all control, when to evacuate and where to, etc. this would seem to be one
of the big areas where Louisiana had problems.
3. tactical coordination... this seems to be where some people think the
problem is, this is where frequency allocations and equipment compatibility
come into play. i.e. what happens when the local red cross and national
guard meet the local fire department at the evacuation center, who talks to
who and on what radio and using which jargon. I don't think in most cases
that this really requires all that much new stuff, if the first two levels
of coordination have been worked out then this should be simple... get one
person from each agency that needs to work together and sit them down in a
fixed or mobile command post and let them do their thing. frequent training
of these groups is one thing that is probably missing these days... how
often do radio operators and officers from national guard units, fema, and
other agencies sit down and run exercises with local police and fire and
redcross and hams?

The problem as I see it is that the radio comms are kind of like a
swimming duck. Above the water line there is not a lot of stuff going
on. Below the line is all kinds of activity.

Are the emergency organizations going to employ pay and train competent
radio operators who are capable of figuring out where they need to be
frequency wise? I doubt it. If so, I wanna apply for that job.

In this group, we've discussed the contesting issue, in which others
and myself have claimed that it is practice for emergency operations.
One regular poster in particular heaps a lot of scorn on those who
believe it is practice. But it is.

These operators would have to be frequency agile, as well as know what
frequency that they should use in a given situation. They need to be
able to copy weak signals, and be patient.

But I can just about wager a months salary that whatever "new" system
we end up with, it will be heavily infrastructure dependent, and
designed so that someone who knows nothing about radio and electronics
will just mash their PTT button. And it will work perfectly in drills.
And it will fail miserably when the "big one" hits it.

Then the hams with their "old technology" will come out of the woodwork
again.

- Mike KB3EIA -