By Jack Brubaker, Sunday News, Lancaster Newspaper Inc.
Lancaster, Pa. — When a gas leak forced Millersville University to evacuate five buildings early last month, borough police officers and firefighters responded quickly.

But because they use different frequencies, emergency workers could not talk to each other.

That’s why Millersville Fire Chief Keith Eshleman held a fire radio next to one ear and a police radio next to the other during the incident.

He figured that was the best way to communicate with his firefighters and Millersville police at the same time. Otherwise, he would have had to walk over to police officers and talk to them in person or relay his message through a 9-1-1 dispatcher.

“We can’t talk with cops except with ‘Flintstone Age’ arrangements,” said Eshleman. “It can be detrimental to the outcome of a situation.”

This problem is not unique in Millersville. It occurs everywhere in Lancaster County.

“There should be a countywide communications system that functions well – not a patchwork system. But it hasn’t happened,” commented Steve Roy, president of the Lancaster County Firemen’s Association,

Eleven years and nearly $14 million after the county announced a plan to upgrade its emergency communications system, little has changed.

Lancaster’s first responders are still using a radio system established in the 1950s and ’60s.

It’s an analog system, although many systems elsewhere have gone digital, some successfully, some not so. It’s a VHF system, although many other systems have moved to UHF or 800 megahertz, which usually have a wider range.

County firefighters and Emergency Medical Service units use VHF low band frequencies at 33 megahertz. Local police use high band at 155 megahertz. That’s why they can’t easily communicate.

And there’s another problem.

The county doesn’t have access to sufficient public safety frequencies. If there are five fires in the county at one time, or four police actions or three ambulance calls, emergency workers may have to share frequencies.

“Sometimes they talk over each other,” explained Mike Weaver, director of Lancaster County-Wide Communications, the system that dispatches the county’s 911 calls. “That can be a safety issue.”

These problems have existed for half a century.

The big change between 1960 and now is that County-Wide Communications, created four decades ago, can serve as an effective go-between for firefighters and police.

Firefighters can call the 9-1-1 Center in Manheim, where a fire dispatcher will notify a police dispatcher to call police. Or the other way around.

County-Wide also can “patch” police and firefighter frequencies together at an emergency location. The agency has a mobile unit that goes to the emergency scene and connects radios.

But both of those options take time – time that police, fire and EMS units often don’t have during emergencies.

Loss of time is not the only concern.

“Anytime you have to relay something, you can lose something in the translation,” Roy said.

No one has yet been hurt here because of miscommunication, according to emergency workers.

“So far we’ve been lucky. People adapt to what needs to be done,” said Gloria Fluck, director of emergency services at Ephrata Community Hospital and a member of a county committee of first responders that is planning how to implement a new radio system here.

“It’s not a matter of if something bad happens,” she added, “but when.”

In some other parts of the United States, the failure of public safety personnel to communicate effectively with radios has caused deaths and injuries.

Firefighters have died inside buildings because their radios malfunctioned and they couldn’t call for help. Police have been shot and lay in agony as minutes passed and they could not get a response to radio calls.

Given the potential for bad outcomes when emergency radio systems don’t work properly, why is the county still using an old, flawed system 10 years into the 21st century?

There are two major reasons.

First, the county and M/A-COM, the Lynchburg, Va., company hired in 2000 to create a new 800 megahertz system called OpenSky, decided to part ways.

“We didn’t like where it was going with cost or coverage or penetration of buildings,” explained Scott Martin, chairman of Lancaster County’s commissioners and the board’s liaison to public safety groups.

The commissioners terminated the M/A-COM contract in 2008 after spending $13.8 million on the system.

That expenditure for 32 radio towers and other communications equipment was not wasted, county officials have noted, because the towers and equipment will be needed for any new radio system.

But the county opted out of providing approximately $21 million more to M/A-COM to complete the system. That system would have been essentially the same – digital, 800 megahertz – as the controversial $368 million radio network that state employees are now using.

The state system has experienced problems with “dead zones” in some locations. The county thought it could create a more comprehensive emergency network by seeking another option.

So the county applied to the Federal Communications Commission to obtain a new spectrum of 100 channels in the UHF 476-482 frequency range. Channel 15 (WLYH-TV) had abandoned that spectrum when it moved to high definition digital.

The plan is to move most public safety communications in Lancaster County to that spectrum, allowing all first responders to communicate on significantly more channels.

The county filed its application with the FCC in early June 2008 – nearly 2½ years ago.

So the second reason the county is still using half-century-old radio technology is that the FCC has yet to make a decision on that application.

“Once we know what’s up with that, whether we get the waiver to use those frequencies or we don’t get the waiver,” explained Weaver, “then we can put out an RFP [request for proposal] and know which way to go.”

Channel 8 (WGAL-TV) also had applied for the former Channel 15 frequencies to improve reception at the fringes of its broadcasting area.

The FCC granted that application, but when WGAL discovered that public safety officials also wanted that spectrum, it backed off and took another direction.

That was last spring.

U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts has promoted the local application for several months, without result.

“Certainly Rep. Pitts is frustrated that the FCC has not made a decision on this in an expeditious manner,” said Tom Tillet, a Pitts aide.

Weaver anticipated a decision in early autumn. He said the county’s Washington attorney received word two weeks ago from an FCC official that the application has moved to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s office for review.

Weaver is hopeful that a decision is near.

So is Commissioner Martin.

“If the delay allowed us to get the best system for our first responders and the best deal for our taxpayers, we’ll be all right,” he said.

However, Robert Kenny, a spokesman for the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, spoke cautiously about Lancaster’s prospects.

The application has not been sent to Genachowski’s office, he said. His bureau and two others are still trying to resolve the issue, he explained, and then the full commission, not just Genachowski, will determine what to do.

“We are giving careful consideration to Lancaster County’s request for the commission to waive its rules,” he said. “It is a front-burner issue that we aim to resolve in the very near future.”

Kenny declined to further define “very near future.”

Meanwhile, this long delay has forced Lancaster’s emergency responders, especially fire companies, to purchase additional radio equipment to make things run more smoothly.

For example, most fire companies in the city, suburbs and some other municipalities have bought $1,200 “repeater” systems that allow them to increase their radios’ coverage area and penetrate buildings.

Local police, fire departments and EMS units also must purchase and repair their own radios. Portable radios used with repeater systems cost about $400.

“It’s been left for the fire departments to solve their own problems,” explained Roy, the firemen’s association president. “It’s been a very patchwork process to do it.”

Costs for individual departments will take another jump when the county moves from analog to digital, requiring new radios and other equipment.

That transition will occur, according to Weaver, whether or not the FCC favors its plan.

If the FCC ultimately turns down Lancaster’s application, the county is ready to move quickly to Plan B, he explained.

That system would be different. It would be an 800 megahertz system, primarily digital, with an analog component.

It would have only 39 new frequencies, with no room for growth. Some existing frequencies (and some of the patchwork nature of the current system) would be retained.

Such a system also would not allow for the same level of communication with surrounding counties.

Under either plan, a pilot program could be started by the end of 2012 and everything should be in place by the end of 2013 or earlier, according to Weaver.

Additional money, perhaps as much as $21 million beyond the $14 million already spent, would be needed to purchase software, as well as expensive radio transmitters and receivers to be installed at existing tower sites, Weaver said.

Martin said he believes the total bill will be less than that.

A decision on which system to implement cannot come soon enough for first responders.

“A poor radio system affects how the public safety services do business,” said Millersville’s Chief Eshleman, who is a member of the county’s radio system project committee. “We can’t purchase new radios until we know how the county is going. So we put some duct tape on the old radio and hope it works for another year.”

Local police face similar problems with old radios and a lack of direct communication with firefighters.

“In major events, where we’re involved with multiple entities, it is very difficult to operate when we can’t communicate,” said Barry Weidman, Manheim’s police chief.

The 9-1-1 Center dispatchers do a great job of relaying information, he said, but “we’re looking for more immediate communications. On totally different frequencies, that will never happen.”

County-Wide Communications is confident that, whether it gets FCC approval for the old Channel 15 frequencies or moves ahead with Plan B, a new system will work better than the present operation.

That’s in large part because of County-Wide Communications’ nine-member radio system project committee, made up of fire and police chiefs, EMS directors, municipal managers and Martin.

“The end users have been involved in the process all along,” said Weaver. “They’re the ones who are going to be using the system. They’re the ones who have to be happy with it.”

First responders are not asking for a lot, he said.

“Designing this system, the priority is you want to push a button on your radio and get someone,” he explained. “If it doesn’t do that, the rest of this stuff doesn’t really matter.”

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