Oct. 30, 2005 - 18:43 MST

HEAR ME ?

Frustrating to me when my fingers and hands are having arthritic troubles to have an entry over half written and by some quirk of fate my digits stumble in such a way that a key or combination of keys is hit in such a way as to dump the whole thing. I have tried to duplicate such action and cannot.

So, where was I ? Thinking about disasters, catastrophes and geological and weather problems as well.

There is an article in today's The Denver Post by Colorado State Senator Dan Grossman that does have quite a bit to say along those lines. He even has some suggestions for sensible solutions. In part:

COMMUNICATING IN AN EMERGENCY

"According to The Associated Press, technicians deployed to New Orleans to repair the flood damaged communication systems of the police and fire departments were prevented from entering the city by state troopers who were using a different, incompatible system made by a different manufacturer. Meanwhile the first responders within the city were forced to use limited "mutual aid" channels to coordinate response, but such channels quickly became overwhelmed by the thousands of users attempting to communicate. As a result, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials couldn't communicate readily with state and local agencies, helicopter rescuers couldn't communicate with rescue workers on the ground or on boats and the National Guard had to use runners to relay messages."

"Katrina, like so many disasters before it, exemplifies the problem created by the lack of interoperability."

"It is a problem that should sound familiar to Coloradans. On April 20, 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School that left 15 people dead and dozens wounded, nearly 1000 cop, firefighters and EMTs respo9nded to the scene. They represented six sherriff's offices, 20 police departments , and 12 fire and EMS agencies. ANd when they got to the scene, efforts to coordinate the operation to rescue the students and apprehend the suspects were stymied by a tangle of incompatible radios and communications infrastructures."

"Other states such as Minnesota and Virginia have successfully implemented interoperability strategies that have improved public safety. Colorado, the home of Columbine, should follow suit."

As Katrina emphatically demonstrateds, we simply can't afford not to."

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Mr. Grossman in his article goes into a system called "Digital trunked radio system," or DTRS - - - which is expensive and not yet fully implemented by our state, apparently Minnesota and Virginia are using such a system.

After all these years of various emergencies in our country our response has never kept up with the improvements that would make it much better. It's easy to flail about and say that a national law should be enacted and (ha, ha, ha, enforced) that all city, state, federal government arms have equipment and procedures that are fully compatible. Sounds easy, but the funding for the equipment comes from cities and states, and each arm fights shy of cooperation at times.

Along with that are the infighting jurisdictional disputes over who is going to be the "boss hog" in any particular emergency.

Seems to me that through legislation and cooperation of manufactureres a system of communications could be developed and manufactured by each business in that sphere -- identical in configuration, use and convenience, one that would work well in the mountain country as well as anywhere else here. The only difference would be the logo of the company making the equipment (and all priced the same). I can't see in a matter this important why all agencies city, state and federal can't get it together and make it work.

I guess that things like this are not considered until the waves are 100 feet tall, the mighty wind blowing things to kingdom come and all power and transportation is non-existent, then some poor soul out there will be calling, "Can anyone out there HEAR ME ?" . . . . . . . . . .

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