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When the waters rose in August 2007, emergency crews were stretched to the limit and hundreds of outside volunteers flooded in to lend a helping hand.
That collaboration helped illustrate a need for radio system upgrades. From State Patrol to National Guard to local crews, radio systems were not always compatible, and the need to match up radio systems became more evident than ever.
The push for radio compatibility has been bearing down since the aftermath of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission made radio upgrades one of its recommendations to Congress, and the Federal Communications Commission followed suit, requiring that all emergency agencies upgrade to a narrow band digital radio system by 2013.
What that means for Winona County, including all city, fire, rescue and emergency crews, is an upgrade to an 800 megahertz (MHz) system. The state has provided funding incentives to switch to this system, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation has erected a slew of towers that will help make the system work in Winona County’s varied terrain.
Mike Peterson, Winona County’s Sheriff’s Public Safety Answering Point Supervisor, has been working on the upgrades, and said the county is taking care to ensure that it can use as many grant opportunities as it can to make the upgrade, which could cost as much as $5 million to $6 million.
Towers, the most expensive piece to the upgrade, have been erected in Alma, Dresbach, Nodine, Money Creek (Houston County), Rollingstone, Troy, Wilson and Elba, with Mn/DOT footing the bill. Peterson said that an upcoming study will help determine where the county may need to erect an antennae on an existing tower or building to add coverage to the city of Winona, which isn’t completely covered by the Mn/DOT towers. The county has already secured a grant for up to $1.2 million to help cover that cost.
The county’s next move will be to hire a firm to help construct a participation plan to connect with the towers and statewide system. While the county has already called for bids on that plan, with the low bid at just over $20,000, the County Board chose to wait and apply for a grant to pay for the plan before it awards the bid.
The plan has to be approved by several state governing boards, and will help outline how many radios, where a new antenna or tower may need to be located for the system, and will help coordinate Winona County’s communications within the statewide radio grid.
The radios are not going to be cheap, but the good news is that many of the radios currently used by the county are in need of replacement anyway. Peterson said the county has gotten a few small grants for some radios, and that “they all start to add up.”
Benefits: increased
security, inter-operability
Peterson said that aside from being able to communicate with emergency workers across the state, the upgrade will improve officer safety. A display system will allow dispatchers to know exactly which officer is calling in, and the radios include an “emergency man down” button. “Current radios don’t have anything like that,” said Peterson.
Current police radios have 16 channels, while the new system will have over 550 channel capability. Emergency workers can be easily assigned to different “talk groups” when a frequency is busy, communicating with emergency workers who are free instead of waiting for other emergency workers to be done talking on the current, more limited channel system.
The radio upgrade will allow local emergency responders to communicate with outside agencies as they never have before, without using dispatch as a translator in an emergency situation. When something big happens, frequencies won’t be tied up.
“It’s a win-win for everybody, in my eyes,” said Peterson, who overheard an emergency worker at the Rochester Airport recently communicating with an emergency worker in Detroit, Mich. “We could never do that with the old system.”
One downfall? Many folks who follow police, fire and other emergency workers on scanners likely won’t be able to tune in without an upgrade once the county makes the switch.
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