Emergency response project's mixed signals
By Chip Johnson
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The goal was to create a system that would facilitate communications among emergency responders.
As it stands now, law enforcement and other public safety agencies communicate on their own separate systems. The Alameda County Sheriff's Department, for example, cannot communicate by radio with Oakland police. The same is true of other police and fire and other emergency services across the region.
The federal agency sought private companies to work with local governments, and in the Bay Area, Motorola was selected to upgrade to 193 communications towers spread across the Bay Area.
The federal agency would provide $50 million so that agencies could easily communicate - via a new 700-megahertz radio band - and coordinate in the event of a major disaster or terrorist attack. Motorola would kick in an additional $20 million.
It turns out, however, that not all local agencies are on the same wavelength when it comes to signing up for this program.
<SNIP>Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/BADK1GQ5OH.DTL#ixzz186XI62o9
Check out http://groups.yahoo.com/group/californiadisasters/
Read our blog at http://eclecticarcania.blogspot.com/
Visit me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/derkimster
__._,_.___
No comments:
Post a Comment