Slashdot Mirror
First Responder Networks 5 Years After 9/11
stinkymountain writes, "Five years after 9/11, you'd think all of the nation's first responders would be on a state-of-the-art wireless network that would enable police, fire and other emergency personnel to talk to each other in case of a disaster. But they're not -- yet. Network World ran an investigative piece sketching why progress has been so slow, and describing the progress that has been made." The article leads off with a scenario that represents the toughest possible test for a first-responder network. Even the best imaginable networked system might bog down in the midst of "fog of war" situations.
Here's a chance to bring a shit load of money to your districts WITHOUT it being considered pork! Duh!
Like a lot of things, this is one problem that cries out "Something must be done! This is something; therefore, it must be done."
It's easy to look at the communication failures on 9/11 and recognize we need a better way of doing things. And it seems like a fairly simple problem that can be solved by a neat, tidy bureaucratic process. But as the example of the warehouse full of refigerators shows, it's really not that simple.
Dark Reflection
Why use broadband? I am trying to understand why the SWAT team lost communication in the building? Do they used a centralized system? It is impossible for each SWAT member to talk peer to peer with each other SWAT team member?
Come on people streaming video is nice but not at the expense of calling for help.
Maybe they should start carrying a few simple HTs as back up for their super wiz-bang system.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It strikes me that in this article, they're just using 9/11 to shock people into seeing a problem that was *already there to begin with*.
The warehouse shootout they mentioned probably would've happened the way it did, 9/11 or not, and the departments would still have complained that they needed more funding for better comms gear than they can afford.
The federal government not only should have figured out standards for first responder radios, it ought to have provided the radios to all first responders. Any time you hear a politician compare the Al Queda threat to WWII, try to remember that if President Roosevelt had responded in the slow, unfocused manner President Bush has, we would all be speaking german now. In WWII, this country completely transformed its economy in less than 2 years to rapidly produce ships, planes and tanks. In 2006, we can't even get working radios. How the mighty have fallen.
Five years after 9/11, you'd think all of the nation's first responders would be on a state-of-the-art wireless network that would enable police, fire and other emergency personnel to talk to each other in case of a disaster.
Five years after 9/11 you'd think we would have reformed our INS department, so that people who pose no threat could gain citizenship with more ease, and people who might be a threat were deported.
Five years after 9/11 you'd think we would have the most secure airlines in the world, with sensible screening processes, yet we do not.
Five years after 9/11 you'd think we would have had an honest review of our interventionist foreign policies since the end of the cold war, by Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush yet this hasn't happened.
Five years after 9/11 you'd think we would have made more progress in developing our own energy, or finding alternative fuels to use.
The only conclusion we can draw is that government, especially big government moves slowly, and is not doing the will of the American public. The American public is just too distracted to care. I blame world of warcraft.
FTA: With IP, SWN can upgrade radio software over the network and provide mobile data support.
The state of software security being what it is, I wonder if the next major attack would not be accompanied by a day zero exploit of a bug in the radio software that renders all the radios useless because the bad guys uploads some bad software. Vendor diversity in radios may be beneficial just as it is in operating systems.
Why does everyone love to point the finger at 802.11 for things it was never designed to do?
Internet methods for emergency communication in a burning building where the power plug has been pulled? Dependence on computer systems in these types of emergencies?
I don't thinks so.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
It's a nice idea, but can you imagine how fast it would be abused?! "Hello, random router, I'm a ... fire official ... please let me route traffic through you." Heck, you could boostrap an entire fidonet-like service in any major city without spending a dime.
No, the bottom line is that, when you're inside what is essentially a faraday cage, you're screwed. You might have the radios figure this out and talk directly to eachother, but that's about as good as you're going to get. The only way around it that I can think of would be to drop a repeater in a doorway or blow down a wall.
Very strange, I'm not sure either. You'd think that even BEFORE 9/11 happened, NORAD would have known about the planes' diverted flight path (and if not the first plane, the second one at least..??) ...but for some reason they had no idea.
Talk about strange.
You'd think that 5 years after this horrible disaster, all of this "homeland security", increased taxpayer spending, would at least help us prepare for another homeland strike..but for some reason, most of us feel more at risk than before 9/11. Even our president tells us it could happen at any time, and the only thing to do is "fight the terrorists".
Talk about eerie...
I'm 26, young and still have a lot of fight left in me...but I'm scared for the older people that are sitting at home, watching CNN/Fox news, scared that a terrorist will blow their house up. Or the kids (the kids!) who don't understand why two huge buildings "just fell down"... For some reason, these billions and billions of taxpayer dollars that are supposed to be going toward helping us all feel better about the security of a nation...just isn't there.
Talk about a completely unbalanced proportion. 5 years later, we still don't know what happened on 9/11.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The reason why it hasn't happened is that WE DON'T WANT IT OR SEE THE NEED FOR IT.
I do NOT want cops polluting my tactical channels with their blather. Do any of you own scanners? Take a listen to EMS, Fire, Law Enforcement, and Air Traffic channels. None of these groups want anybody else to contend with when the shit is hitting the fan. The vocabulary is different. The lingo is different. The culture is different. It's hard enough at an emergency scene to keep traffic to a minimum between the various commands, let alone adding several more channels that someone has to monitor, and shout over.
This is why NIMS and Unified Command exist. The various agencies can talk to each other IN PERSON since they're face-to-face, and then relay the messages via their radio frequencies to their people.
We don't want it. We don't need it. If you want to see how we operate in an emergency, ask to be an observer at the Command Post the next time your local jurisdiction does a mass-casualty drill. Airports do them on a grand scale once per year to once every two years. The regional Counterterrorism Task Forces do them once per year. Your regional Emergency Management Agency does it once per year. Watch and learn. We don't need more crap on the radio.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
A ten kiloton nuclear weapon goes off in the heart of downtown Manhattan tomorrow.
How's that for a test? Certainly Iran is doing everything in its power to make this a real possibility...
- Crow T. Trollbot
You might have the radios figure this out and talk directly to eachother, but that's about as good as you're going to get. The only way around it that I can think of would be to drop a repeater in a doorway or blow down a wall.
And both are valid solutions I was thinking of mentioning (ignoring the one about blowing down a wall). Why can't the radios mesh and have one (or more) that can talk to the nearest fixed repeater act as a local repeater? Why can't they have repeaters they can drop in the middle of the building to take care of the problem? I know that some police cars have repeaters built into them, so why not have a briefcase one for emergency use? If it's such a huge warehouse, I'm sure that police cars could have driven in it directly, why not drive the cars in and have the repeaters in them help out?
The problem is that the people designing the systems are non-technical and the technical people are being involved only after the system is designed and the budget is approved. When someone is given $5 million to build a wireless network to have 98% outdoor coverage and that is the correct amount for that task, he can't make it also cover inside to that same 98%. So, they need to get the tech people in the design process sooner. They need creative people with technical understanding to come up with scenarios like the failure listed so that the people that approve the budget can decide whether they will or will not address such problems.
Learn to love Alaska
One might think that RF and EE -type engineers would be in big demand; after all, with all the new mandates for better communication systems - these guys should be the go-to experts.
When CNN wants to talk about why the radios didn't work inside WTC, they don't speak to RF engineers, they speak to a uniformed fire captain, the misinformed mayor, or some under-informed political hack for the Port Authority.
When the FAA and AF command centers couldn't get enough information to make decisions on 9/11, you might think they might increase coverage to avert info-gaps. My local TVnews tells me the NYC metro area is under-staffing ATC by around 30%.
Friends tell me a local PD (07xxx) is refitting its aging radio infrastucture. Instead of taking the lower-priced, higher wattage, more versatile Isreali version... they are signing a new contract with the same-old-vendor. Guess what - they continue to use radios from the same mfr. who made all the radios that failed the firefighters in the WTC.
We don't need terror; we should live in fear of our own idiots.