Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com
Published - Tuesday, April 22, 2008
New radio system would aid interagency communication
In the response to the Interstate 35 W bridge collapse last August, first responders from multiple agencies had the benefit of a common radio system that allowed them to communicate with little trouble.
Less than three weeks later, floods in southeast Minnesota demonstrated how badly the rest of the state needed such a system, said local law enforcement officers.
During the floods, a hodgepodge of devices were used to facilitate communication between agencies, including amateur ham radios and cell phones, said Winona Police Chief Frank Pomeroy. Communication was congested with multiple agencies all trying to talk at the same time on a single channel, said Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand. They had to either break in during pauses or simply wait their turn, he said.
“The most crucial thing to public safety is communication,” said Scott McNurlin, chief deputy of the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Department. “We joke that it’s usually the first thing to go.”
To try to make sure that remains a joke, Minnesota has created a project called the Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response. ARMER will build a statewide, shared radio system available for all law enforcement and emergency first-response agencies to make interagency communication more efficient.
The Department of Public Safety hopes to have the system, in various stages of development since 1995, completed by 2012. The southeast Minnesota phase of the project should be completed by the end of this year, said Scott Wiggins, director of the ARMER/911 programs.
Although efficiency is a major motivator, change is also a matter of federal regulation. The Federal Communications Commission has ordered all radio communication go digital or migrate into systems like ARMER by 2013, said McNurlin, who is also chairman of a committee overseeing the implementation of ARMER in southeast Minnesota.
Changeover welcomed
While the state is not mandating that agencies go with ARMER, the system does provide a solution to public safety’s interoperability problem, Wiggins said. Locally, the system is gaining support.
Pomeroy said the current analog system used by the county is “archaic.” McNurlin said in times of disaster, people are stuck waiting to get through on the radios or may be dropped off the network.
To combat those problems, a backbone network of hundreds of radio towers is being built statewide to provide an all-digital, “trunked” communication system on an 800-megahertz frequency.
“Talk groups” would be assigned to specific agencies on the scene of a disaster, allowing them to communicate with the command post without tying up a single radio channel or having to wait in line, as the current system demands, McNurlin said. Wiggins said hundreds of “talk groups” can be created without overloading the system.
For everyday communications, ARMER will combine five or six frequencies, and a computer program randomly selects open channels as agencies use the system, Wiggins said.
He compared it to a line of people waiting to see a bank teller: Five tellers — radio channels — at the front of the line were responsible for certain people only. One teller handles police, while another handles fire and another handles public works, for example. If 90 percent of the people in line are waiting to see the police teller, the other four are essentially doing nothing. ARMER would put those other four tellers to work, accepting communications from everyone in line.
ARMER creates a “much more efficient, robust communication system,” Wiggins said.
Not without a price
Because ARMER was in use during the bridge collapse last summer, coordination and communication on the scene was “marvelous,” Pomeroy said. But he also said it’s a “very spendy” project.
Wiggins estimated the total statewide cost for ARMER to be about $500 million. He said about half of the 240 statewide tower locations will need technology upgrades while the other half will need to be built from scratch at a rate of about $750,000 a piece. He said a half-billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but the state radio board found that if each local agency upgraded their systems individually, it would cost them each about $1.4 billion. And that’s without the added efficiency of ARMER, Wiggins said.
Local costs are high as well. Five of those radio towers already exist in Winona County, but with current coverage, the City of Winona appears to be a blind spot that could require building a sixth tower.
If that lack of coverage drops the overall county coverage to under 95 percent — as required by the ARMER project — the state will have to foot the bill for a sixth tower, said Winona County Administrator Bob Reinert. However, if overall coverage is sufficient without including Winona, the city would have to pay for the new tower.
Besides the cost of towers, all-new radios and equipment will have to be bought. Brand said a typical portable radio — those seen on an officer’s belt — costs about $3,000. Pomeroy estimated a mobile radio found in squad cars costs around $6,000. Rough estimates from Brand and Pomeroy put the total number of radios being used by police, sheriff’s deputies, fire departments, first responders and public works across the county at around 430. It would easily cost more than $1.5 million and perhaps as much as $2 million to replace all those radios.
“It’s quite an expense,” Pomeroy said.
Neither formal discussions on how to pay for ARMER in Winona County, nor the official decision to even join in have taken place yet, Reinert said. However, following two studies conducted here, a task force will recommend the County Board switch all communications to ARMER at its regular meeting May 6, he said.
Contact Kevin Behr at (507) 453-3524 or at kbehr@winonadailynews.com.
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