Interopabilty Achieved- Fire in Federalsburg

[tolley]

If anyone had a chance to listen to double apartment fire in Federalsburg on Friday night you could say it was successful as far as interagency communications go. There were fire departments from three counties as well two states all communicating on the same radio system (Upper Eastern Shore Consortium). Units from Dorchester could talk to units from Caroline or Sussex or vice versa. Messages and commands from the incident commander went straight to the units or chiefs responding with no delays whatsoever. For anyone who lives in this area you will know what I am talking about because we have been plagued for years not being to talk to each other on the same radio system. Hats off to guys from Caroline, Dorchester, and Sussex for putting up a hard fight trying to save the apartments but unfortunately there wasn't much they could do to save them due to the heavy fire they encountered initially. Fortunately and most important no one was killed or injured. In the future our ability to talk to surrounding jurisdictions will prove to be a great thing.

 

[gesucks]

how many of these units had direct access to the system and how many units had to go through the ITAC channels patched in? We are trying to work with UESC to get talkgroup access for state wide mutual aid (such as the new FRED 2 system is disgned for) and we are being told that no UESC will not put others on for mutual aid they have to use ITAC patches. does not sound like the best solution for interoperibilty. Esp when companys have the radios that can be put on the system. Any input would be great, thanx

 

[tolley]

All units from each county had direct access to the system. No ITAC or NPSPAC patches were needed. Not sure what you mean by the Fred2 system. Where are you located? In my opinion the Upper Eastern Shore Consortium has done an excellent job as far as interopabilty goes. The system can be directly accessed by any jurisdiction that has Motorola Digital or Analog capabilty or VHF capability. This goes for all of the Delaware Counties, Dorchester, Anne Arundel and Wicomico Counties as well as VHF patches for MSP, and Kent Maryland. I believe it is up the individual counties to assign or allow talkgroups to be programmed into radios from other jurisdictions. Further interopablity will be achieved once the statewide NPSPAC system is in place.

 

[gesucks]

We are in PG co, we have 800 radios from a federal grant for state wide and DC metro interoperability, WE are working we MEMA to get state wide access. Fred 2 is a system maintained by miemss and mema of all state wide fire and ems resources for deployment in an emergency. Lets say you had a major hazmat fire in easton and need 30 engines to the eastern shore, you can go to fred and see what is avail and what each unit has on it in the state. FEMA and MEMA are backing us 100 % on getting the talkgroups and access to the systems, but some dont want to play the interoperabilty game ie:UESC they say no one from this side of the bridge will need to come there and talk to them, so if you do have a major incident, we will have to use a patched ITAC channel and hope that works good enough, if you have more than one or 2 units to the shore you might have to have 3 or 4 patches going, one for dispatch, one for response, one for EMS one or 2 for the big incident we all came for. or you could have no patches and distribute the access to the talkgroups for true interoperibility

 

[tolley]

It is not true that the UESC will not talk to other units from across the bridge. Anne Arundel County has their talkgroups programmed into Queen Annes and Talbots fire radios. It is a necessity for Queen Annes and Anne Arundel to communicate as a matter of fact they do it all of the time. The purpose of the interopability grant is to ensure units can talk to each other in a major emergency. I also agree that NPSPAC is ok for small emergencies but if you had a major deployment of resources five NPSPAC channels will not cut the mustard. The Incident Command structure to handle such a task would require several channels dedicated to several tasks such as Field Communications, FEMA coordination, EMS, Fire TAC channels, Police Intercommunication, etc. The main problem I see in all of this is that the state wants a statewide radio system but has left it up to the individual counties to procure the money either by grants or taxes to build new radio systems. This creates a situation where each county "guards" their little empire and won't let others come in unless they say "please" and kiss your feet and make other promises. They (The state)is working this problem from the bottom-up and not from the top-down. I feel that the state of Delaware has their Sh%* together when it comes to this problem. Everyone in Delaware is working from a unifed radio system with complete interopabilty and NPSPAC is really not needed. Coming up it will be interesting to see how the state will handle this problem because there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

 

[doctordave]

Tolley,

Was the activity on one of the JFTAC talkgroups, or simply on a local FD Tac?

Dave

 

[tolley]

It was on Caroline Fire Tac 3.

 

[doctordave]

Thanks, Tolley. I'm over on the Shore quite often and am impressed w/ the coverage / interop of the QA system. DE certainly has nice multi-agency use (thus good interop), but they are continuing to have significant troubles w/ dead spots and poor in-building coverage.

 

[tolley]

As far as Delaware goes I can't deny the deadspot and building coverage issue and that needs to be addressed for sure but I am impressed by Delaware's overall coordination of agencies from a radio system standpoint. Maryland has a long way to go regarding this issue.

 

[doctordave]

I agree. MD actually had fairly good interop for law enforcement back in the 70's & 80's when most agencies were on low band and MSP 1 (39.1) was in most vehicles/911 Centers. With many organizations jumping to other bands, the utility of this freq has fallen by the wayside. I'm really curious to see how the under-construction inter-op project will impact things....sounds promising.