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Communicating
for
Health
and Safety
First
responders can coordinate far more effectively
during emergencies when they can talk with each.
Every Virginian should agitate for communications
"interoperability". The patootie you
save could be your own.
Regular
readers of the Rebellion will perhaps recall that
this column has been a forceful advocate of
improved communications among those emergency
response organizations we count on to ameliorate
natural and man-made disasters. Now the National
9/11 Commission has given the nation a failing
grade for having made little or no progress in
this critical area since 2001. Not that we ever
expect anyone to listen to us, but we feel a wee
bit justified in a small “told you so” way.
Stovepipe
communications systems that communicate only
within themselves harken back to the early 20th
century when police and fire departments
considered themselves to be distinct entities
unlikely to work together except in most unusual
circumstances. They felt it important to keep
their communications systems “pure" and free
from any outside involvement in order to ensure
they could swiftly accomplish their relatively
narrowly conceived missions.
If
there is any lesson of the Internet, it is that
the more people that have access to the Net, the
more powerful and useful it is. If one could look
at the FCC frequency assignment chart, one would
be bemused by the number of similar organizations
performing similar functions that are operating on
discrete frequencies. That means they
can’t talk to one another unless they know the
other guy’s cell phone number, and the cell
system is operating, and they aren’t out of
minutes, and they didn’t misplace the phone. No
worries mate; perhaps we can just send up smoke
signals from our burning cities.
Here
in Virginia, in many ways the very epicenter of
the Internet and home to a robust IT and
communications industry, we have a governor who
actually understands a good bit of all of this
from his previous life. If he weren’t so busy
running for the 2008 democratic nomination for
President and tracking the number of seconds
various luminaries spend reading to school kids
whose parents can’t/won’t read to them,
perhaps we could set the example for how to
address this communications “scandal,” as the
9/11 Commission describes it.
We’ve
only seen the Cliff Notes version of the 9/11
report so we’re not sure whether the Commission
feels that organizational cultures dictate
communications patterns or that communications
patterns lead to isolated organizational cultures,
so there could be even larger problems at work
here. Perhaps the experience of the American
military can be instructive. Once upon a time, not
so very long ago, the Air Force couldn’t talk to
the Navy in tactical situations, the Navy
couldn’t talk to the Air Force, the Army
couldn’t talk to anyone, and the Marines, as is
their wont, chose to speak only with God and/or
the Devil depending upon the direction in which
the newly deceased annoyance was being dispatched.
As recently as the Vietnam unpleasantness, the
“Guard” channels, common frequencies designed
to pass threat information and coordinate search
and rescue ops, were often filled with operational
matters as real warriors dealing with real bullets
and real missiles used any means available to get
the job done. We probably all remember press
reports of the Army type who used a pay phone to
call in an air strike during the Grenada crisis.
The point being that whatever the organizational
culture issues that might bedevil communications
among our emergency response elements, they pale
in comparison to those that once bedeviled the
military.
If
memory serves, it was the U.S. Congress that put
an end to this foolishness. The appropriators on
the Hill simply told the Pentagon that they
planned to de-fund several important Pentagon
initiatives unless the military types could figure
out how to communicate with each other on the
battlefield. Suddenly the term
“interoperability” sprang to a million tongues
as if by magic. The Defense Communications Agency
came alive. We tell this little tale just to make
sure our readers know that it is not unreasonable
to look to the government for effective leadership
on this kind of issue.
Our
experiences volunteering with the Red Cross after
Gaston and helping out in the Gulf Coast after
Katrina have led us to conclude that it is
absolutely essential that everyone has a clear
picture of what has happened/is happening and
where. Scarce resources must be coordinated and
aid and succor brought to bear where they can do
the most good, both real and apparent. As Katrina
showed us, there is an important political
dimension to emergency response and significant
possibilities for the mainstream media to get the
story all wrong and make the situation even worse.
As we saw in New York, in a man-made disaster
there is likely to be a significant law
enforcement/damage limitation element to the
crisis.
When
the doo doo is striking the whirling blades, those
being spattered don’t have time to build and
populate a website so that others can Google them
for the info they need. Those involved in the fray
have to be able to get on a radio and talk to the
people they need to talk to: right now!
This
is neither conceptually nor technically difficult.
Remember sociograms from high school Social
Studies? The same technique can be used to figure
out who needs to talk to whom and to pass what
kind of info. If you have doubts about the
technology, pay attention to the kind of info you
can get on your cell phone or from your satellite
radio broadcast. We read recently that the Koreans
are going to link their cell phone system to GPS
so it will be possible to tell if ol’ Kim Il is
really staying late at the office or is at the
bar. What if we really put our minds to this
thing? It could be phenomenal.
The
tough part, as always, is political will.
Political will tends to follow public concern so
write the Governor, write your Delegate, write
your Congressman. Hell, write Santa Claus. Just
get involved! The backside that gets saved could
be yours or that of a loved one.
If
the Great Minds that populate official Washington
can take time out from their busy schedule of back
biting and partisan BS to say inadequate emergency
communications capability is a problem, it might
actually be a problem. We don’t want to do
another “told you so” story on this subject.
--
January 3, 2006
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