Communications Litigation Today was a service of Warren Communications News.

Cooperation, Coordination Key to Crisis Communications

Cooperation among first responders, with officials at all levels connected, and police and firefighters linked, is key to better emergency communications, speakers said Fri. at the FCC First Responders Summit. Speakers repeatedly invoked the mass murders at Va. Tech to stress the need to improve crisis communications.

“It’s all about the sandbox,” John Johnson, radio system analyst with the Tenn. Emergency Management Office, said: “We can build the most reliable communications system, we can get all the grant funding in the world, we can get all the technology in the world, but if we can’t learn how to get along with each other and work with each other interoperability is never going to go forward.”

“The force that binds us all together, that makes things work… is relationships,” Chief Charles Werner of the Charlottesville, Va., Fire Dept., said: “It’s a very different situation when you ask a friend for help than when you ask a stranger. When you ask somebody you don’t know the answer is, ‘What do you need it for, why do you need it, how long, who gave you permission?’ When you call a friend they say, ‘When, where and how long?'”

Werner said events like the Va. Tech shootings cause huge increases in communications, straining systems. “The more that you've done to plan for this the quicker that you'll get out of that avalanche,” he said. Werner added that with “no one silver bullet” first responders must rely on a variety of systems. Public safety can use commercial systems but “we need to have hardened sites, we need to have the reliability, the redundancy, the resiliency that works if it’s going to be mission critical,” he said.

Victor Cullars, public safety consultant to Fla., said 1992’s Hurricane Andrew chastened his state. “We took a hard look at not only what we did but where we did it and where we did it wrong,” he said: “It still wasn’t the whole wake up call.” Individual disciplines’ internal communications worked well, but the collective interaction was inadequate, he said.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Fla. tried to mandate coordination of communications among police, fire and EMS officials. “We all came into a room, we locked the doors, and quite frankly there was a lot of hollering, a lot of shouting, a couple of punches here and there,” Cullars said, adding that conferees agreed on 3 keys to better communication: “One, establish relationships before the fact, two, cooperate, and three, that nobody had all the resources. It would take every resource that everyone had to get the job done.”

Communications systems designers must work closely with first responders, David Jordan, chief information security officer for Arlington County, Va., said, citing his office’s approach: “Rather than just running around looking at the latest and greatest technology and then throwing it at our public safety folks, we engage them in conversation and try to understand what their needs are. We listen to them for the what and then we ask them to let us do the how… The fire and police guys realize now it takes more than guns and hoses to support an incident. The technology guys are part of that responder team.”

In taped remarks at the summit’s start, Chmn. Martin called the meeting “an important step” toward helping first responders plan for disasters. “Coordinated planning and training will help us achieve our common goal to further improve emergency preparedness for all first responders,” he said.

FCC Comr. McDowell who urged better cooperation between safety officials and wireless carriers. “A statistic that I find astounding is that emergency response providers typically pay $3,500 to $5,000, each, for radios alone,” he said: “It’s no wonder that our first responders can’t always afford the latest technologies. I want that to change.”

Comr. Copps said the and future meetings should be the province of the FCC’s new Public Safety Bureau. “We can act as a clearinghouse for ideas and proposals to address public safety communications,” Copps said: “For years I asked the question why should every jurisdiction and every first responder have to start from scratch in devising a plan, while others have tried many different solutions, some of which worked, some of which didn’t work… How much better it would be if first responders could contact an FCC, which already had this record.”

Comr. Adelstein said he hopes the summit and other FCC efforts lead to better cooperation among first responders. “We never know when or where the next crisis might happen,” he said: “It could be New York, the Pentagon, New Orleans, or, of course, someplace like Blacksburg.”

Satellite communications has a critical role in crises since it doesn’t rely on landbound infrastructure, David Cavossa, exec. dir. of the Satellite Industry Assn., said: “When terrestrial systems go down, satellites provide that redundancy other terrestrial systems can’t provide… because that disaster just took out all the terrestrial architecture,” he said. The satellite industry is trying to get more satellite gear in first responder hands, Cavossa said: “You can do broadband, video, voice, data applications, via satellite. There are fixed applications, mobile applications, backhaul for cellular or wireless or wireline networks. Satellites also play a key role in redundancy for systems.”

Satellites provide a ubiquity other systems lack, Cavossa said: “There are no dead spots. There’s no area where our coverage doesn’t really work.” If emergency communications go only for terrestrial systems, “we'll be in trouble again when the next disaster strikes,” he said.