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#21
September 14th 05, 06:23 PM
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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. 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: 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? |
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