Disaster Non-Communications

[Tom WA3KLR]

Inter-agency communications is a real mess, if even possible.  I mentioned previously in an AM Inquirer forum posting called "a kickstart for digital tv" that the UHF TV channels above Channel 51 will be re-farmed.

Here is press release info from a congressman's site on his efforts at a solution.  Please consider this schtuff from the technical point of view, not political.
- - - - -

WELDON, HARMAN TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE ON INTEROPERABLE COMMUNICATIONS

WASHINGTON, Sep 7 - Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), Ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, will host a joint press conference tomorrow to highlight the critical need to improve first responder interoperability in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Weldon and Harman, the original sponsors of the Homeland Emergency Response Operations (HERO) Act, which would free up four channels of the broadcast spectrum to allow emergency workers to better communicate, will be joined by local first responders from the Washington, D.C. area.

The press conference will take place at 11:00 a.m. at Cannon House Office Building Terrace, located on the corner of Independence and New Jersey Avenues.

“The communication failures I witnessed last week during a visit to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region cost lives and hindered rescue operations, all of which could have been prevented,” Weldon said. “Legislation has been calling for spectrum allocation since before 9/11, and even the 9/11 Commission called for implementing the allocation in its final report, yet nothing has been done to provide first responders with this critical capability.”

Last Friday, Rep. Weldon delivered portable, battery-operated wireless communications equipment to first responders in the Gulf Coast region. Weldon sought to ease some of the communication collapses experienced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which was hindering the search and rescue effort.

“During the 9/11 attacks, the Southern California wildfires and again throughout the rescue effort along the Gulf Coast, we witnessed an almost total breakdown in first responder communications,” Harman said. “We don’t need another breakdown to learn this important lesson. Congress must make it a priority to give emergency workers the tools they need to save lives.”
_____________________________

WHO
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.); Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.); Steve Souder, Director, Montgomery County Maryland 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center; Chief Harlin McEwen, President, International Association of Chiefs of Police; Chief Bill Killen, President, International Association of Fire Chiefs; local first responders
WHAT
Joint press conference to urge Congress to take action on the issue of interoperable communications
WHEN
11:00 a.m. on Thursday, 8 September 2005
WHERE
Cannon House Office Building Terrace, on the corner of Independence and New Jersey Avenues.
----

Excerpt from another press release to determine what the "wireless comm. equipment" was -

Congressman Weldon presented officials the donated rescue equipment, which will go toward assisting first responders with the massive relief effort. These supplies include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with thermal imagers to aid in the search and rescue operation, and specialized, portable, battery-driven wireless networking equipment to support officials as they race to restore a virtually destroyed communications infrastructure. "It is the local first responders who need the most help," said Weldon. "Our priority should be to get them back up and running so they can help bring their communities back online."

- - - - -

Perhaps some of you can provide input on this subject to people you know in the right places.
It seems to me that common NBFM capability in the VHF region may be good and of course there is good old HF and SATCOM.  There are many HF channels assigned for years to Red Cross, FEMA, etc.  National Guard, too?  I hope so, but do they really have any equipment and practice nets?

[W3SLK]

First responders have been using low-band (46Mhz) for years. I know because that's what we use here.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Well of course we have a good idea of how communications systems could be linked together in an emergency - but how many ever get set up that way?  It's bad enough that municipalities have spotty coverage because of the effect of bad terrain on UHF, but then there is often no way to cross-connect any channels of their systems.

One big party line wouldn't do it.  That would be chaos.  You need certain tactical comms that are limited in use - a few channels dedicated to local fire teams, a few channels dedicated to local police teams, state police teams, maybe FBI channels, Homeland Security channels, etc.

The Incident Commanders need to be able to talk to their subordinate commanders, and to each other.  This is what has been lacking.  Back when I worked for The Ultimate Boss From Hell, we designed a repeater that connected several portables from the various command systems together, and repeated whatever any one of them received, to all of the others.  Simple, stupid BS, with a trick PTT matrix, and it worked great.  Acoustic couplers with VOX made it possible to link to any telephone (landline, satellite, or cellphone). Of course, the smarter the phone link, the better.  It linked the command systems together, and all you needed was a portable from each system, set to the command channel that was being linked.  The commanders had a party line between themselves, and if different systems needed to be linked, you just selected portables or telephones from the desired systems, and off you went.  He's still building and selling that stuff.

There are still the problems of too many systems all too close to each other, and desensing each other.  But the main problem is that the commanders can't talk to each other.  The bigwig companies don't design simple cross-linking, the designers don't think of it, the installers are lost in space, so it usually doesn't happen.  And the dynamics.... maybe one department had the local police and fire linkable, and they added an FBI channel, but suddenly they needed to include Homeland Security... they probably had the upgrade scheduled for 2008.  This is why the  portable repeater-linker is the way to do it today.

Now, something the size of the Katrina disaster area.... covering two states...  wow.  You need local communications clusters talking at a high level.  For the high level communications - like, Chertoff's personal assistant would have been the net control - satellite probably would be the way to go today.  State stuff - county level networks and clusters linked border to border would work.

The Red Cross has satellite data links that can be used for data or VOIP.  Interface this with emergency voice and data communications, and you can really deal with a big disaster.

The problem with Katrina was that our government does not take the situation seriously.  They played the usual political games, and when push came to shove, they were out to lunch.  The story here is flat-out unbelievable.  You could have the most advanced system ever, but if the principals are partying, it won't help.

9/11... the World Trade Center was a major radio hub.  When the plane hit the south tower, a lot of systems went down.  Many never came back up.  Emergency people need portable repeaters.  This is not trivial, so it generally doesn't happen.  And how would you cover the inside of a 110 story building?  High power and beams from the outside, that's how, and it would have to be emergency gear from the local municilalities, counties and state to work with their specific radios.  But that would take more than a trained firefighter to set that up, so it isn't done.  MAYBE systems could have a few backup transmit locations, and the dispatchers could be trained to switch to a backup in the appropriate area.

[WA3VJB]

Weldon, along with Harman, spent a lot of time beating up on television broadcasters for delays in surrendering analog channels that have been promised to projects creating this "interoperability" scheme.

When asked why, if there's such urgency, the military has not been approached to cough up the 24 MHz said to be needed for the plan, Weldon said there is a classified report the military presented that claims they need all the spectrum they've got.

Each analog television channel is 125KHz wide.  How many does it take to create the 24 Mhz chunk Weldon is complaining about?

A couple things here don't add up.

One of the other people at this news conference was the crew boss for a 35-person team that deployed from Fairfax County, Virginia to Mississippi.  I had interviewed him on depaarture, and asked him again after his return whether the radios worked in the field as intended.




His answer was that his team members were able to communicate no problems. It was the lack of crossover ability with other state, local, and federal task groups that created redundancy in searched areas as well as leaving some areas overlooked.

Today, I was at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee.  There was discussion of "radio caches" that are stashed in two places around Washington, DC that can be handed out as a set of compatible units to facilitate communications.

The goal is to hand these units out within two hours of a large-scale crisis so that multiple juristictions can talk and monitor the response.

How's THAT for a reassuring system ?

Paul/VJB

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Each analog TV channel is 6 MHz wide OM. Only four are needed to get the 24 MHz.

The comms incompatibilty problem is not going to be fixed quickly. The US Armed Forces have been trying to do it for decades. They still aren't there completely. The JTRS program is but one SLOW effort.

http://jtrs.army.mil/

[WA3VJB]

You're right, Steve; maybe I was thinking about the old TV Channel 1.
(my set still has that and it seems kind of pinched)

Lines:
Frames:
Scanning:
Bandwidth:
Video carrier:
Audio carrier
         
 525
30 per second
interlaced (2:1)
6 MHz
AM modulated, vestigial sideband
FM modulated,  +/- 75 kHz deviation
(later +/- 25 kHz deviation)

Seriously,
The way it was marketed to our local county, TRUNKING radio was supposed to solve all coordination and band loading problems, taking a larger number of  channels to hop among instead of the 4 that used to be employed.

Oh, guess those frequencies are rather close to cellular telephone. Watch out when you're chasing the crooks that they don't run up to a stie and hope for some de-sense.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Bandwidth isn't the issue.  Intelligent use of the existing systems is the problem.  The Incident Commanders need to be able to communicate with each other, and their communications link needs to be easily reconfigured as needed.

Mayors on cellphones aren't going to cut it when the cell system goes down.  The planning Bozos need to start using their heads.

[w3jn]

It's difficult to set up an emergency substitution if your primary is a computerized trunking system.  If your sites crap out you're done for.

This is a prime example of bleeding edge technology falling flat on its face when the chips are down.  In the old days any halfway competent radio tech could build up an emergency repeater out of a couple old Motracs salvaged from the scrap pile, a car battery, and a couple of antennas.  No more.

THe problem as I see it isn't lack of spectrum, it's more a dependence upon increasingly complex radio networks that, although they work well when things are OK FINE, they are extraordinarily fragile.

73 John

[WA1GFZ]

Right on John. The trunking repeater goes down the whole system goes dead. I hated ice storms when I worked for mot. All the microwave links JSed
 got iced up and everyone went crazy.
Then the 800 MHz systems point to point had crappy range without the high power repeater.
Low band works most of the time without fancy hardware. Interesting the little hick towns with simple low band hardware rarely had communication problems and they didn't spend a fortune on fancy toys. K.I.S.S.
I bet the mil systems with divisional empires must be a real trip. Then there is secure communications and nobody wants to share key codes.

[Tom WA3KLR]

I think I heard a politician recommend a national emergency “channel” the other day.  I believe it may have been Rudy Giuliani.  The Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana in a press release a few days ago mentioned the communications problem. 

Last night on ABC’s special report on the failure of the response system that ran an hour before Bush’s speech, the President of the Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard, said that we need a "fortress of radio towers" and "citizens with transistor radios".  I guess some of the lessons of the cold war and Conelrad have been lost already.

After Bush’s speech until 11 p.m. Eastern time, ABC covered 3 disaster scenarios – earthquake, nuclear detonation and the real killer flu pandemic that may be coming this fall.

Before we get into the lack of preparedness for these other pending disasters, I keep wondering how loss of communications played in the apparent late response of the Louisiana National Guard.  The BBC TV World News reported that a LNG soldier said they were ready but never got the final order to go.  I doubt they had an HF net or satcomm net going as backup.

I hear now that National Guard trucks became flooded just like the school buses in N.O.  The Louisiana “command” was in Baton Rouge, itself in the affect area. 

Re-farmed 700 MHZ national emergency channels may be a slight help, but we know the range is very short unit to unit without a high repeater antenna or airborne platform.

The cross-linking ability of various comm. systems is probably a good part of the total solution.  Trunk tracking has probably created a big nightmare and there are I think 4 – 12 different trunking systems out there. All of this is UHF and has short range. 

Having equipment caches is a good thing also. 

Almost all emergency communications can tolerate being in the open; not encrypted.  When the nuke goes off in NYC, that regional FEMA guy would probably want a secure channel when he orders the first 50,000 body bags however.

Katrina and 9-11, two different disasters but both had communications problems.  What would have helped in NYC while the towers were burning, an airborne UHF repeater loitering in the area onboard a plane.   A helicopter may be a bad choice due to blade reflections, but it would be better than no repeater.  Better communications at the Towers would have saved many more police and firemen.

I’ve always been amazed at the large number of different HF radios designed and produced for the military and commercial use even in the last 25 years.  Take a look in the Janes Military Communications book.  It would be nice if the old stuff was going into back-up FEMA, National Guard and Red Cross service.

 The U.S. Air Force has a system of HF communications sites around the U.S. and world to keep track of the military flights.  I doubt they should take on the emergency communications for the U.S.  But we could have regional HF comm. sites like the AF system.  Imagine such a facility in Kansas City or Indianapolis, would be just the optimum distance from New Orleans for talking with back packs in the 20 meter region.  Repeater operation – say 15 MHz. in, 13 MHz. out; every backpack in Louisiana and Mississippi could hear every other backpack in the area.

We could even loose satcomm in some scenarios.  (My word processor wants to change “satcomm” to “sitcoms”.  We can afford to loose sitcoms.)

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Amateur bands were taken during both World Wars, and channels in the amateur bands are often taken for emergency communications.  It makes sense for amateur frequencies to be used in emergencies.  Satellite links would of course be the simplest and most consistent and capable, operationally, unless the satellites become targets of the event.  If all else failed, amateur HF, VHF, etc, would serve with distinction, as it has many times in the past.

Whatever bands are used, the primary unsatisfied communications requirement is flexible Incident Commander intercommunications.  Future public service systems need to be designed for rapid, flexible, yet simple Incident Commander link configuration.  Future emergency communication systems need to allow for this as well.

[w1guh]

  When the nuke goes off in NYC,

And when it does, I hope I'm close enough so I don't have to witness the aftermath.  And I mean that sincerely.

Paul

[w3jn]

THere already is a national emergency/interagnecy operations channel - 155.475 MHz

But of course the whizbang APCO25 800 MHz trunking radios can't talk on sucha  low-tech cahnnel, caw mawn.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Interesting story on FEMA/DHS looking for open radio systems.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050916105216639

[W1QWT]

Here in my coastal town we have an active CERT (Citizens Emergency Response Team) of which I am a member. It is sort of like the old Civil Defense but we were trained by the Fire Department and come under their umbrella.
We use the MURS frequencies (151 MHZ FM ) to communicate to the Fire Department Headquarters.
My CERT team's staging point is the High School which is the shelter. I provide Amateur HF and VHF communicatons to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), the Red Cross (Health and Welfare), Salvation Army (Health and Welfare) and to the town EOC.

During the blizzard of 78 the only communications out of town was through Amateur Radio! The selectmen actually came to the HAMS to communicate with the State.
Atleast our town has something in place for emergencies and communications.

Regards
Q, W1QWT

[W2JBL]

   did i just read a few posts back in this thread that somebody in congress is calling for a national emergency frequency? that guy has not done his homework very well. we have had it for about 25 years- it's 155.475 carrier squelch and called "nationwide" by the cops. ALL federal law enforcement agencies have it, and nearly every department i have seen in the NYC area also have it in their cars, portables, and local control base stations at police HQ. it's simple, low tech and it WORKS. here in New York we have a "statewide" emergency channel, also in everbody's radios- 155.370 carrier
squelch. trouble with all this is that when it hits the fan most cops don't know they have such capabilities, and fewer even know how to use them. the avergae cop around here gets about an hour of training how to use his radios. pretty sad situation, and one that mkes my job miserable at times. 

[w3jn]

THere already is a national emergency/interagnecy operations channel - 155.475 MHz

But of course the whizbang APCO25 800 MHz trunking radios can't talk on sucha  low-tech cahnnel, caw mawn.

I said the same thing a couple of posts up.

[Art]

1. In a MOT trunking system there can be up to five channels (of a 20 ch system) that share control cannel duties. If one goes down the next picks up the task. There are systems that have all channels capable of control channel ops. If all control channels go down talk around (in cabinet repeat can be activated automatically).
2. There are interoperability consoles that connect systems at IF or AF (if requred). Double vocoding is avoided.
3. VOIP systems probably would present the most significant challenge as they tend to be marginal to start with and proprietary digital at "IF".
4. Sites on wheels exist (I participated in developing the BMS-1000) and can be deployed to the area.
5. Microwave is one of the most vulernable elements and should be backed with fiber or other PTP techs.

The bottom line is technology exists. It is a matter of priority. Like the cat 3 capable city, 'only happens every once in a while so procrastination is common.

Yep, looks like I'll be moving to CO via LA . . .

-ap

[Tom WA3KLR]

Many interesting comments here.

Not being in 2-way servicing or a scanner nurd, I was not aware of the 155.474 freq.  TNX.

You can move in the portable comm gear later, but my concern is a sudden loss of all telepones at the disaster outset and still being able to carry out the first response with little or no delay, and having broadcast stations on the air.
 

[Art]

Tom, that's a multi faceted requirement . . . the cell phone system and its link to the pstn have a lot of vulernabilities that have been pointed out. Even when they do remain on the air like Nextel did during the Northridge quake, the system quickly gets overloaded. To prepare a system would have to be oversized such that it probably wouldn't be economically viable. Perhaps a mechanism to restrict usage to public safety use only during emergencies would be an approach. 911 could still be up and running so the individual can report real emergencies etc. . . then health and welfare traffic manned by hams would be an even greater asset.
It can be done. We need to get our head into the emergency preparation business as well as response. That ounce of prevention (of communication outage) thing . . . .

-ap

[W2JBL]

   Nextel actually put an ( initially secret) public safety priority scheme to work shortly after 9-11-01. then recently they capitalized on it by actually SELLING it! the higher the priority, the more you pay. we use Nextel at work, and fortunately are on the "public safety" network in the area, so it's not bad when it hits the fan. during 9-11 it still worked, even in Manhattan, but was a bit busy at times. i don't see a "seamless interoperabilty" disaster radio system coming in these parts any time soon though. in my county there is a ASTRO digital UHF system coming to replace the overloaded lowband fire radio system, with links to NYC. the New York State Police gave a huge contract to MAcom (formerly GE) for a statewide 800 MHZ EDACS trunk system. the whole thing looks like a recipe for big headaches though. intererability even at the local level never seems to get off the ground in these parts. too many vendors, no clear standards, crossband/cross system issues, and lack of training foil even my best attempts to get everyone connected when it hits the fan. we have sold a few of thoe vox operated boxes that cross connect a few portables to link systems, but they are too much for the average cop of firefighter to figure out how to deploy under pressure. around here all  anybody knows  about radio is  cahnnel one and push the button. what are all those other channels for?"

[Tom WA3KLR]

Hi Art,

I wasn't envisioning a system that would handle all phone traffic, just some forms of radio communications for the local and state governments, police, national guard, etc.; the chain of command that didn't exist in Louisiana apparently.

Chris,

I was thiniking the other day that the cell phones could have a priority code that in an emergency only the command and response people would have the top priority. As usual anything we think of is probably already implemented.  Good idea.

I went to the Kenwood 2 meter rig in my car to program in 155.475 and found that I had apparently done that years ago!  Don't remember how I learned of that channel.

[w3jn]

You won't hear too much on 155.475.  Sometimes it's used agency-to-agency to coordinate high speed chases but most of the time it's dead.

Maryland State Patrol still is going the lo-tech (why fix it if it ain't broke) route.  VHF-low in the cars with a small crossband repeater in the trunk of the squad car so the officer can use his handheld.  Works FINE BUSINESS and the taxpayers don't have to fund the Motorola salesman's yacht by shelling out for a multi-million dollar digital trunking system that's two steps backward in functionality.

[W2JBL]

 155.475 (nationwide) is a hotbed of activity in the NYC area. the feds, state, county and locals use it for "secret squirrel" jobs. it's also the favorite secret coffee, lunch order, BS and chit chat channel. during 9-11 (here in the NYC area) it saw very heavy use, by those who had the brains to get various different agencies together on one channel. a good 100 watt mobile can have surprisingly good range there, due to the lack of "co channel" high power bases and repeaters clogging it up like other public safety channels. at my job we just got a contract to supply and install an APCO 25 system on UHF for an exsisting VHF simplex customer. we are going to leave the VHF radios in the cars so they are still going to be able to reach the state, county, and locals agencies who are all l on VHF. that way no fancy cross linking etc will be needed. the KISS principle is important to the cops.