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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.
Reading about how the radios could not communicate inside of certain buildings I wonder if it might make sense to include an "emergency" channel in wireless networking equipment. After all, many warehouses have wireless access points setup for their mobile inventory devices.
This 802.11 emergency channel that could be activated and used by emergency personell equipped with special radios - kind of a "skype-911".
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A local Fire/Police organization was recently trying to upgrade their radios to a newer system. The project failed spectacularly with huge cost overruns and was eventually cancelled. Their solution? Award a virtually identical contract to the same vendor for the same system. The problem is government...wasteful spending brought on by too many years of overfunding. Where a $5 solution would suffice, they ALWAYS spend $500. The solution? I dunno, anarchy maybe.
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.
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.
The communication problerm, on 9/11 was too simple ..
A device called a repeater is a radio receiver and transmitter that re-transmit the low power walkie talkies from a high location, with much higher power giving these hand held transceivers much increased range both in terms of receive and transmit distance .
This so called failure was no failure at all
Its a political Football for one simple reason
Many of the the repeater(s) that provided these communications were on the trade center itself !
Nothing else need be said,
No matter how well it worked, It cant work if it is gone
Poleticans can care less about how it works. And why it cant
Another problem is that in many cases, those who make the decisions on what to buy have no experience in using the equipment. They believe whatever the sales reps tell them and the end users get stuck with equipment that works poorly while getting told that there is nothting wrong with it. Public Safety personell are cursed with equipment that does not work as well as the equipment they used to use.
I know this because I work in public safety and we have this problem. 800 Mhz systems are being pushed heavily right now, yet nobody thinks of the problems. Sales reps gloss over problems, saying that these systems will work so much better than the VHF systems they are replacing. But these new radio systems work in the same general frequency range as the cell phones everybody has. How many times are your calls dropped because you drove into a valley or walked into a building? How would you like to be an officer searching for an armed suspect when that happens? I have had that happen, and trust me, it is not a good feeling when it does.
The sales reps will say you don't need any extra tower sites for the new system, what you have will be more than enough. But for decent coverage in the UHF band you need your antennas on the high ground so you can cover the low areas of your coverage area and you need a lot of them. Cell phone companies understand this and put their towers on the high ground near areas of heavy usage. Unfortunately, public safety does not get anywhere near as many, and those that they do have are often set up where they already have land, such as the back yard of fire stations. These are frequently not in the best location geographically for radio coverage, and money is not spent on obtaining decent transmitter locations.
Sales reps don't care about this. All they care about are sales. They know that once the sale is made, they are out of there and it is no longer their problem, but the buyer's. Sounds a lot like the IT field, doesn't it?
There are 4 types of liars (in order):
4. Liars
3. Pathalogical Liars
2. Car Salesmen
1. Sales Reps
So remember the Dispatchers saying, "Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts."
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
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.
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Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2.
I have some idea of how to build and maintain distributed RF networks. They way you phrased your question seems to indicate that you do not. I get the thought that you and others have this model in your head where Radio systems are all some magic digital mesh network. They are not. Many of them are using 15 year old technology or older. To create the kind of emergency network communications system that we all think should already be in place would require a basic replacement of much of the current communications systems.
There are several basic reasons for this: 1-There is old technology still in use. 2-Current systems were paid for piece-meal, by one department or another and not purchased, planned, or configured for wide dispersion communications cooperatives. That is to say that the fire dept. buys their gear, the police buy their own gear too, and someone has the unfortunate job of trying to make the two systems match up at some level, usually not a great matchup. 3-Financing means that the updates to even the most coordinated of communications systems happens in fits and starts. So, while the police get new comms gear, its 5+ years before the fire dept. catches up, but then their gear is much better, or supercedes the old police system. Hospitals get upgrades even less frequently! Now, add to this the need for additional comms channels to FEMA, Army, National Guard, Coast Guard, municipal utilities, power utility, gas, water, etc. etc. The chances of getting all those systems on the same page is a bigger problem than just getting FEMA to take appropriate actions.
After 911, there were multiple deptartments, cities, and services involved. After Katrina/Rita, there were multiple states involved, and their multiple comms systems.
The only sure way is a huge forklift style upgrade of just about everyone's comms systems. BTW, adding geographical redundancy is a huge cost to all those groups, so get ready mr. and mrs. taxpayer... its a huge cost.
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