Radio Interoperablility Part of Problem in January Metro Incident

Some of the radio communications worked during the Jan. 20 Washington Metrorail smoke incident inside L’Enfant Plaza station, but emergency responders from outside of the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority had trouble with communications, said witnesses during a National Transportation Safety Board investigative hearing Tuesday. From the early stages of the incident, one of the rescue squads experienced radio problems, said Derron Hawkins, deputy chief of D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services. Once the first arriving unit entered the station from the mezzanine level, responders started experiencing more problems, he said. The commander had problems with his radio on the day of the incident, he said. When the system failed to operate, the commander used his BlackBerry phone to communicate with the officials on the scene, Hawkins said. “The process may not have run smooth as we would like it to become, but we are doing things to improve that.” The underground public safety radio system works but is delicate and requires a high level of maintenance, said Scott Goldstein, acting fire chief for Montgomery County (Maryland) Fire and Rescue Service. There were no reported issues on WMATA's communications channel, said Ronald Bodmer, director of Metro Transit Police Department's Office of Emergency Management. In the station, some officers reported some blocking of the radio during the incident. Before the incident, ongoing testing was an informal process, said Marshall Epler, deputy chief of COM and NET systems for WMATA's Department of Transit Infrastructure and Engineering Services. If one of the local jurisdictions found fault with its system, it would contact the WMATA maintenance radio manager who would put in a work ticket and the department would rectify the problem, he said. Now, the first thing WMATA is doing is testing local jurisdictions weekly, Epler said. “We animated a map,” he said. “On this map, you can now tell carriers that have poor radio coverage based on maximum work tickets.” It's extremely difficult to maintain a radio system, Epler said. WMATA’s current radio system was designed to provide radio coverage in 95 percent of the public areas in a station 95 percent of the time, he said. April 17, WMATA announced early action items, which included a radio maintenance program. Last week, a Federal Transit Administration report raised some issues with the quality of the rail system's radio communications (see 1506170053).