Radio woes still plague homeland security
Rocky Mountain News
December 6, 2005
Colorado, like the nation as a whole, still falls short on a number of homeland security goals, officials say.
On Monday, the 9/11 Commission gave five F's and 12 D's in grading the nation's response to its 41 key recommendations for preventing and responding to another terrorist attack.
One major problem is the continuing inability of first responders from different jurisdictions to talk to each other over radios.
"It is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis," said 9/11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton in releasing Monday's report.
In Denver, Mayor John Hickenlooper was unhappy to see in a recent disaster drill that this problem has still not been solved here.
The problem stems from decisions some 15 years ago to buy police radios that are incompatible across models and frequencies.
It's as if Cingular and Verizon cell phones could not communicate with each other.
After the Columbine High School killings in 1999, when hundreds of responders had trouble communicating with agencies with different kinds of radios, Colorado began investing more than $130 million in a new state radio system.
The system, though still incomplete, is now used by every state agency and dozens of other emergency agencies, including the Jefferson and Arapahoe sheriffs.
But Denver, Aurora, Lakewood and others have huge investments in radio systems that can speak to each other, but not to the state system.
Denver recently purchased state- of-the-art computer equipment that can translate any incompatible radio calls.
But the recent disaster drill showed that installing the translation device is just the first step.
The individual radios of thousands of first responders in the metro area must undergo minor reprogramming and responders must be trained.
Hickenlooper insisted after the drill that this would become a higher priority.
The 9/11 commission also condemned a federal failure to conduct risk assessments of the nation's critical infrastructure and to fund security improvements.
In Colorado, little has been done on this front, by either the state or the metro area.
Only a dozen or so site-specific security projects have been funded in Colorado, largely in El Paso County.
"There's so much to do, that you can't do everything at once," said Tracy Howard, Denver's acting emergency response manager.
Howard added that radios and other equipment for first responders have been a higher priority.
Rocky Mountain News
December 6, 2005
Colorado, like the nation as a whole, still falls short on a number of homeland security goals, officials say.
On Monday, the 9/11 Commission gave five F's and 12 D's in grading the nation's response to its 41 key recommendations for preventing and responding to another terrorist attack.
One major problem is the continuing inability of first responders from different jurisdictions to talk to each other over radios.
"It is scandalous that police and firefighters in large cities still cannot communicate reliably in a major crisis," said 9/11 commission Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton in releasing Monday's report.
In Denver, Mayor John Hickenlooper was unhappy to see in a recent disaster drill that this problem has still not been solved here.
The problem stems from decisions some 15 years ago to buy police radios that are incompatible across models and frequencies.
It's as if Cingular and Verizon cell phones could not communicate with each other.
After the Columbine High School killings in 1999, when hundreds of responders had trouble communicating with agencies with different kinds of radios, Colorado began investing more than $130 million in a new state radio system.
The system, though still incomplete, is now used by every state agency and dozens of other emergency agencies, including the Jefferson and Arapahoe sheriffs.
But Denver, Aurora, Lakewood and others have huge investments in radio systems that can speak to each other, but not to the state system.
Denver recently purchased state- of-the-art computer equipment that can translate any incompatible radio calls.
But the recent disaster drill showed that installing the translation device is just the first step.
The individual radios of thousands of first responders in the metro area must undergo minor reprogramming and responders must be trained.
Hickenlooper insisted after the drill that this would become a higher priority.
The 9/11 commission also condemned a federal failure to conduct risk assessments of the nation's critical infrastructure and to fund security improvements.
In Colorado, little has been done on this front, by either the state or the metro area.
Only a dozen or so site-specific security projects have been funded in Colorado, largely in El Paso County.
"There's so much to do, that you can't do everything at once," said Tracy Howard, Denver's acting emergency response manager.
Howard added that radios and other equipment for first responders have been a higher priority.
