Tuesday, October 18, 2011  In the height of election season, the radio communications system in Shelton has become an issue.

Chris Jones, the Democratic candidate for mayor in Shelton and a volunteer firefighter, says the radio system is old and needs repairs. He cites a grant application the city filed with FEMA to back up the claims. The application says the radio communications fail half the time.

Jones and other firefighters say the radio system has been a problem for several years.

Mayor Mark Lauretti, a Republican incumbent running for re-election, said the system needs to be upgraded, but disputes that it fails half the time.

Saturday, October 15, 2011  It happened again Thursday night.

Radios failed firefighters who responded to a house fire in the White Hills section of the city. In fact, the fire call came in around the time a Board of Aldermen meeting -- where several city firefighters told aldermen of their concerns about the radios -- was wrapping up.

"My pager went off and it indicated there was a fire in the White Hills section," said Alderman John "Jack" Finn, who is also a volunteer firefighter.

"But then it just went dead," he said. "Nothing came over the pager."

He said fellow aldermen wanted to know where the fire was. "But I couldn't tell them. The transmission just stopped," he said.

Finn said he was able to find the fire after driving to the fire station. "I heard fire sirens and followed them," he said.

He said he found it interesting that the communication failure would happen shortly after concerns were raised during the meeting.

Prompting those concerns was the federal grant application for $1 million recently submitted by Tim Manion, vice chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners, to replace the aging, substandard radios. Manion said those radios fail 50 percent of the time.

That's a figure Mayor Mark A. Lauretti disputes, saying that, although it was put into the FEMA application, he doesn't believe it's true.

But Manion said the problems at Thursday night's fire on Stendahl Drive underscore the need for immediate attention to the radio system.

"The firefighters on the scene were having a tough time understanding what was being said because of static on the radios," Manion said Friday.

He said he received a complaint from the captain at the scene about the situation. "I've told everyone to send me emails to document all radio issues -- to keep a log of days and times," Manion said.

Lauretti said he knows the equipment is "old and has shortcomings and needs to be replaced," but doesn't agree that it fails that often.

"These types of problems are not unique to Shelton," he said. "I stand by my comments."

City officials -- Lauretti, Fire Marshal Jim Tortora, Police Chief Joel Hurliman and John Milo, director of the city's Emergency Management -- Thursday afternoon supplied documentation concerning the number of service calls, they said, were made by faulty radios.

The two pages cite 35 service calls for a nine-month period beginning Jan. 1. In the grant, Manion said there had been 12 repairs to the existing radio system in the three-week period prior to his submission of the grant application Sept. 21.

"That's just not the case," said Milo, a former Shelton fire chief. "The figures in the application just don't jibe with the facts."

Lauretti said the list of service calls are the irrefutable facts. "All the rest is garbage," he said.

Julie Reibold, president of Northeastern Communications Inc., which has a service contract for those repairs, said she couldn't comment on the figures the city provided because of client confidentiality.

"We do want a better system, but you can't incite the people," Millo added. "These are very minor issues."

But one city firefighter disagrees, saying it is "a life or death situation."

John Tatum, a former Norwalk firefighter who recently became a city firefighter, along with his son, was one of the speakers at the aldermanic meeting.

"I'm scared for my son and all the other firefighters," he said. "Someone has to wake up here or someone will die."

He said firefighters can't hear radio transmissions. "We don't even know what trucks are already on the scene," he said.

Chris Jones, a firefighter challenging Lauretti in the November election, said the city has known a long time that the equipment was old and needs to be replaced, but the city still sends them out to fires knowing the radios might not work. He called that "criminal."

Thursday he presented a challenge to aldermen.

"I'd like you all to come out with us sometime and ride on a fire truck to a fire and see what happens," he said.

Read more: http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/How-bad-are-Shelton-firefighters-radios-2219339.php#ixzz1arTUIBRc

Friday, October 7, 2011   NIOSH has released a report that links too few radios and communications issues to LODDs at a fire in Chicago in 2010. For more particulars, visit:
http://psc.apcointl.org/2011/09/27/feds-poor-communication-before-firefighter-deaths/

Thursday, October 6, 2011   A Montreal Coroner's Inquest has implicated both a potentially faulty fire alarm system and incorrect CAD recommendations in the deaths of two students.

Local news coverage starts here:

 http://www.montrealgazette.com/story_print.html?id=5477844

Thursday, October 6, 2011   A bill entitled Help Emergency Responders Operate Emergency Systems Act of 2011’’ or the ‘‘HEROES Act of 2011’ has been introduced in the House. It would provide $400 million to assist agencies meet narrowbanding requirements.

The full text can be found at: 

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr2976ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr2976ih.pdf

Wednesday, September 7, 2011  Caught in thick smoke in a burning suburban Cincinnati home, veteran firefighter Robin Broxterman and her novice mate, Brian Schira, tried to summon help on their Motorola digital radios. She called four times, he another half-dozen, according to radio logs from the 2008 incident.

For seven long minutes before concluding that contact had been lost, the Colerain Fire Department's incident commander heard nothing discernible from Broxterman and Schira, certainly no urgent "mayday" calls for a rescue operation, an internal investigation found.

In the ensuing rescue effort, Broxterman, a 37-year-old mother of two, and Schira, 31, were found dead in the basement, covered with rubble from a collapsed floor.

"No firefighter should have to die because of a radio that doesn't work," said Arlene Zang, Broxterman's mother and a firefighter herself, while conceding that other factors influenced the tragedy.

Many of the nation's biggest fire departments, spooked by allegations that Motorola's digital radio failures contributed to the deaths of at least five firefighters, the disabling of a sixth and scores of close calls, have limited use of the glitzy gadgets acquired in a post-Sept. 11 emergency-communications spending splurge.

The headlong, federally backed push to buy tens of billions of dollars in digital equipment, including radios priced as high as $6,000 each, gained momentum despite the lack of any government standard ensuring that they'll perform for firefighters. Multiple investigations and tests have since found flaws in the equipment made by Motorola and its rivals.

Fire departments in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Phoenix and Boise, Idaho - communities that have spent tens of millions of dollars on the new equipment - are so leery of problems that they won't use digital radios at fire scenes.

Boston firefighters "are not to use digital radios," said Joseph Brooks, radio supervisor for the city's Fire Department. "They don't have them because I said no."

Analog technology, whose radio waves mimic sound waves, is stable and proven to be reliable for firefighters, he said, while computerized digital radios are "great for public works and building inspectors whose lives don't depend on their radios."

While a number of companies sell digital radios to public safety agencies, most of the focus falls on Motorola, long the industry's dominant player and holding an estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of market share.

Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola Solutions, Inc., which took over Motorola Inc.'s public safety-communications segment in a recent spinoff, stands by its digital radios, the most sophisticated of which it boasts are waterproof and can withstand the force of a bowling ball dropped on them again and again. In a statement to McClatchy, the company pointed to its more than 80-year history of providing public safety agencies "with reliable, state-of-the-art equipment and innovative solutions."

"While other vendors have come and gone, Motorola has remained committed to serving these dedicated professionals and has closely listened to public safety's needs," the firm said.

Motorola declined to quantify its U.S. public safety business, but said it served more than 1 million first responders worldwide.

Motorola's newest generation of digital devices offers a full range of features and costs "without ever compromising first responders' safety," the company said.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/06/2393522/firefighters-balk-at-new-digital.html#ixzz1XGoZ1NPm

Friday, August 26, 2011   The city's plan to dismantle its 130-year-old fire alarm call box system was dealt a blow Monday when a federal judge ruled the plan discriminated against the deaf and hearing impaired.

City lawyers argued that it would save some $6 million in its first fiscal year, if it was allowed to dismantle its 15,000 call boxes. They also said the system was plagued with false alarms that endangered the lives of fire fighters and that most residents seeking help used cell phones and landlines.

But the city was sued by a group of deaf and hearing impaired residents who said they relied on the fire alarm boxes to make emergency calls. In 1997, a judge handed down an injunction against the city.

In its motion to dismiss the injunction, the city countered they could use public pay phones combined with a "tapping protocol" to indicate whether the deaf or hearing impaired needed help. In his ruling, Judge Robert Sweet of Federal District Court said that wasn't good enough. He wrote that public pay phones are unreliable.

"This decision is a life saving ruling which preserves their ability to summon fire, police and medical emergency services from the street," said Robert Stulberg, a partner at Broach and Stulberg, the firm representing the plaintiffs. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Disability Law Clinic at Syracuse Law School also joined the action.

An attorney for the city, Jonathon Pines, said the city was considering its appellate options.
"We are disappointed that the Court, in denying our motion, is requiring the Fire Department to maintain a street alarm box system, at a cost of many millions of dollars a year, that has been all but abandoned by the public," Pines said.

But some experts said instead of trying to shut down the fire alarm boxes, the city should instead modernize the system. For one thing, during a large scale emergency, cell phones might not work.

"We like to think we're immune from any problems," said Glenn Corbett, an associate professor for Fire Science at John Jay College. "But our most modern technologies come with a price, and come with a potential for failure."

Friday, August 26, 2011   The comment period for NFPA 1221 - the standard that applies to communications centers - is rapidly coming to a close.  The window closes on 8/31, so speak now or forever hold your peace.. or at least until the next period of review.

Visit www.nfpa.org  for more detail.

Saturday, July 30, 2011   A recent FCC report validates what many of us in the business had suspected for a while; that people with disabilities are not chronic users of 9-1-1. The vast majority of the more than 3,000 participants in the study had not dialed 9-1-1 in more than two years, and those who did typically had few problems.

You can find a copy of the complete report at: http://pdf.911dispatch.com.s3.amazonaws.com/fcc_disability_911_survey_2011.pdf

Saturday, July 30, 2011   The LA Times in reporting that a multi-million dollar project to provide interoperable communications for public safety agencies in Los Angeles County is in jeopardy due to legal concerns. 

Read the details at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-emergency-communications-20110728,0,5014245.story

Saturday, July 30, 2011   A discussion is underway in Sand Diego with regard to how response times are calculated and reported. Among the issues are whether on not the time it takes to process the 9-1-1 call should be included, and the omitting of peak demand periods from the stats.

More discussion here: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jul/23/emergency-response-times-longer-than-reported/

Thursday, July 28, 2011   Fellow Secret Listers:

September 11,2011 marks a decade since the largest LODD in the history of public safety. I am asking everyone's help in organizing a National Moment of Radio Silence on all public safety channels at 0959 hours Eastern time as a tribute to those brave individuals who made the supreme sacrifice during the attack on America. The time was chosen to correspond with the collapse of the first tower at the WTC site.

Those agencies wishing to participate should sound an alert tone. followed by whatever message they see fit. This is one thing that we can collectively do despite budget cuts. In fact, some agencies already do it on their own; but how great would it be if we could get this coordinated across the country?

As usual, emergency traffic would take priority, but hopefully we can all find the time for a few seconds on a Sunday morning to remember those who have passed.

If you are interested in joining this grassroots movement, then simply spread the word. Those of us already participating would be honored by your company.

Barry

Sunday, July 17, 2011   The Federal Communications Commission recently moved to improve 9-1-1 location standards by the year 2019. In their original report and order, the FCC allowed both network and handset location technologies to be used to locate a caller. The network technology uses a triangulation of sorts, while the handset uses a GPS chip in the phone. Many in public safety favored the handset to begin with, but the original order allowed carriers to choose their own means. That battle (like VHS vs. Beta) has pretty much played out, and the commission has been moving to improve the accuracy of location services over the years.

Read the latest updates at:

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2011/db0712/DOC-308377A1.pdf

Sunday, July 10, 2011   One of my alert dispatchers, who is also an assistant chief at a local VFD correctly pointed out that in at least one incident, NIOSH has mentioned the role played by failing to practice mayday incidents in a LODD. So, I ask: When did you last practice your mayday SOP? Did you involve your dispatchers in this process? If not, do yourself a favor and go back and do it again. These folks are another set of ears that can be there when things get tough. But, they need to know what to do BEFORE that time comes. So, if you don't have a Mayday Radio SOP - get one. If you do - practice it with EVERYONE involved. Enough said.

Sunday, July 10, 2011   A white paper to Congress concerning the funding of emergency communications is available at:




http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R41842.pdf




Happy Reading!