I ain't so sure it is fair to blame the radio system. The emergency responders - police, fire, EMS and emergency management honchos should be in close physical contact with each other and could have just as easily had a face to face communication. And who is to say they didn't - but one said "apples" and the other heard "oranges". We are humans and can mishear things with the best of them.
Even with that - what was the harm with "sheltering in place"? Even if ultimately unnecessary, the worst would have been people staying inside at a minor inconvenience. Also, if nothing else, it might have reduced the number of curiosity seekers on the road system clogging it up for people having a need to get there.
The emergency management manager who was there did try to get all responding agenices to use the same talkgroup and it ended up with everyone but fire being on the same talkgroup - mutual aid 2. So everyone (but fire) was really on the same channel not too long into the incident.
However with all the radio traffic that was going on, I think it would have overloaded one talkgroup had fire gone to mutual aid 2. Then there would be the fussing "with this new system we still can't talk because the channels are so busy".
I believe in listening to the incident the radio system performed reasonably well. The challenge may be in communicating versus communications.
They say that "practice makes perfect". We have so few of these incidents and drills ain't the same as the real deal. Thus we, fortunately for the community, don't have enough to get perfected.
