Reporter seeking assist

[sebastiankunz]

Hey everyone. I'm cBas, and I've been quietly lurking here since I bought my BCD 396T in 07.

I'm also a news reporter for 2 radio stations in the Bay Area, and I'm working on a news series called The Other Digital Transitions. I've covered digital radio (the commercial aspect), analog CABLE channels going away after the DTV switch, and so on.

But now I'm hoping for an assist. My next piece is on the transition from analog to digital Police and Fire radios... I remember reading an article some time ago(maybe here?) on a firefighter who died following his agency's switch from analog to digital. I can't quite find it now, but I remember reading that an apparent cause was background noise causing the transmissions to be incomprehensible, thus rescuers couldn't locate him inside a burning building. Anyone?

I'm looking for anything you guys have... News articles, anything on the web, that story I mentioned... anyone worth interviewing via phone...

Any help at all would be appreciated. Feel free to email me at work (sebastiankunz@clearchannel.com) or just telephone (415) 356-5502. I often am on the air doing traffic or news, so if you get voicemail PLEASE leave one.

Many thanks in advance... and thanks for ALL the posts and education. I've learned a great deal from you all, even if I've kept mum until now.
-Sebastian Kunz

 

[WayneH]

Incorrectly posted to the News/Announcements forum so moved here.

 

[SCPD]

Why not Try google, like everyone else??

 

[RKG]

There have been a couple of such incidents, though I don't believe any resulted in a fatality. In each case, a Fire Department was using a digital channel on direct (simplex) on the fireground, and the finding was that other users on the fireground would sometimes not hear a fireground transmission (even though listeners some distance away would). This led the NFPA to disallow digital voice on the fireground in the revised NFPA 1221.

One of the incidents occurred on FDNY, and they required Motorola to reprogram all of the radios for analog voice.

 

[n5ims]

Here is a google search to help you start your research in the issue. fireground digital issues - Google Search

The problem is that the digital encoding used has serious issues in a noisy environment, as is commonly the case in a fire fighting situation. The noise from the fire, smoke & fire alarms going off causes the fireman's voice to be garbled often. This is worse in the most critical times, when a firefighter needs immediate assistance due to being trapped or a collapse when they're calling for help and their PASS device has gone off.

This link is a good starting point and is from the International Association of Fire Chiefs, which should be a reputable source for you as well. The International Association of Fire Chiefs

 

[gmclam]

There was a related issue discussed here, where a fire fighter's radio did not "work" because its signal did not reach a repeater. Many times all radio channels are repeated, and especially with newer systems, there are a lot of 'dead spots'. If the weak signal is digital, it is tougher to make out what is being said compared to analog. Certainly a fire fighter could switch to a non-repeated channel, but then someone nearby needs to be monitoring that frequency.

 

[RKG]

The FDNY issue occurred with simplex, fireground channels, and was determined to be some form of near-field desense that prevented frame synch, resulting in no digital audio; in the incident I have in mind, another unit, many blocks away and beyond the near field, heard the transmissions clearly. I believe this incident led NFPA to declare that digital voice is not acceptable for fireground transmissions.

 

[rvictor]

The FDNY issue occurred with simplex, fireground channels, and was determined to be some form of near-field desense that prevented frame synch, resulting in no digital audio; in the incident I have in mind, another unit, many blocks away and beyond the near field, heard the transmissions clearly. I believe this incident led NFPA to declare that digital voice is not acceptable for fireground transmissions.

I looked at NFPA 1221 and couldn't find the specific provision that disallows digital radios. Do you happen to know the specific section number?

Thanks.

Dick