Police Chief Martin Volkar once held a suspect for nearly 10 minutes while he tried to dial for backup on his cell phone.
Police, fire and emergency personnel can’t always communicate with each other, and, for rural villages, it can mean the difference between life and death, say first responders.
Jimmie Herstine, chief of the Quad Ambulance District in Sandy Township, predicts, “It is just a matter of time before either a fireman, emergency medical technician or a policeman is seriously injured or killed due to lack of proper communication.”
COMMUNICATION IS EVERYTHING
When the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11, scores of emergency personnel died because they couldn’t talk to each other.
In December, the nation got a failing grade on the Sept. 11 Commission’s final report. A 10-member bipartisan panel gave an “F” to radio communications for first responders; a “D” to critical infrastructure assessments; and a “C” to incident command systems.
According to a report the Ohio Department of Public Safety released in October, nearly one- third of Ohio’s counties, 28 of 88, still have no common radio frequency for first responders.
In 2002, information that a fleeing motorist had a gun never reached Taylor. Word had to pass from an Ohio Highway Patrol trooper — initially involved in the chase — to the Highway Patrol communications center, then to the dispatchers at the local Regional Emergency Dispatch Center, and, finally, to Taylor.
Taylor was shot and killed before word got to Massillon that the motorist was armed.
A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Stark County is one of the fewer than 20 percent of Ohio counties that now have the technical ability to communicate with all first responders, local health departments and state agencies in the event of a large-scale emergency, such as a tornado or terrorist attack.
In December, Stark County Sheriff Tim Swanson made countywide communications a reality by distributing hundreds of portable radios — linked to the Sheriff Department’s 800 MHz trunked radio system — to all local police, firefighters and paramedics. The multimillion dollar system was made possible through federal grants, totaling $8 million, that U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Bethlehem Township, helped secure.
The problem is that the 800 MHz system cannot be used for daily communications because there aren’t enough frequencies to allow every police cruiser, firetruck or squad that may be out in the county at one time to communicate.
“The main thing now is, in (large emergencies), communication capabilities are better by far,” he said. “The goal is to make it for day-to-day communications.”
Meanwhile, departments such as Waynesburg have no opportunity to apply for their own large federal grants. Smaller departments would have to come up with about $15,000 to increase radio capabilities. And in departments such as his — with total budget of about $70,000 — that’s virtually impossible, Volkar said.
CONSOLIDATION IS KEY
In 2004, Herstine, chief of the Quad Ambulance District, applied to the Homeland Security Grant Program for money to build a dispatch center that would bridge the lower section of Stark and upper portions of Tuscarawas and Carroll counties. The ambulance district consists of the villages of Waynesburg and Magnolia, and Sandy and Rose townships.
Improving communications was the goal as area police, fire and emergency medical personnel can’t speak directly to each other. That means if police came across someone in need of medical attention, they could not directly radio emergency services, but would have to call 911 with their own cell phones, which have signals only 70 percent of the time, said Herstine.
OUTLOOK STARK
Even the RED Center — which dispatches for about a dozen police and fire agencies, and averages 60,000 police calls and 10,000 fire calls per year — doesn’t go far enough to overcome duplication and improve efficiency.
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