By Clarence Fanto, The Berkshire Eagle
Original publication date: Aug. 30, 2011

PITTSFIELD. Ma. — As a result of the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office’s access to funding for homeland security, mountaintop communications systems have been upgraded to cope with emergencies such as Tropical Storm Irene this past weekend.

Sheriff Thomas Bowler has just been appointed to the National Sheriffs Association’s Homeland Security Committee, where he’ll serve as one of about a dozen members from across the nation. He had previously attended the association’s national training program for law enforcement and social service agencies.

“It’s a way of setting policies through the association and to become very familiar with funding resources,” said Bowler. “Homeland Security has always been a top funding priority for security of our country and law enforcement. We’ve actually received some of the benefits of those resources, so it’s important for our area that we have representation in order to seek out the sources of funding and appropriations.”

According to jail Superintendent John J. Quinn Jr., “Throughout Berkshire County, we’ve been able to upgrade, renovate and really bring the technology of the mountaintop units and communication in the county from the dark ages to the light ages with a microwave system and redoing the huts with generators.”

Specific improvement projects have ranged from $400,000 to $1 million, he said.

“People in this county really should feel much safer because the communication is much better,” Quinn said.

According to Bowler, when Hurricane Bob hit the Eastern Seaboard in 1991, communications systems were far less advanced.

For Hurricane Irene, downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it ripped through Western Massachusetts and Vermont, “the reason why the Eastern Seaboard was so well prepared — not only because of the media coverage — was because of things like Homeland Security that allows you to communicate and have the resources so that you only have the 35 deaths and obviously the damage,” Bowler said.

“Communication was so much more advanced and people were so much better prepared, so even though it wasn’t as devastating as we thought, this storm was a great training tool,” he said. “When you have the systems and resources in place and the communication, this is the outcome.”

Quinn also cited other Sheriff’s Department preparations for a worst-case scenario, including trailers with beds, light towers, barricades, sign boards and pens for pets that were made available countywide “because of Homeland Security funds that have trickled down from the national to the regional level.”

He said funding has totaled “into the millions.”

Bowler dismissed notions expressed by a few people that the storm was hyped, resulting in over-preparation.

“That’s the way you want it to be,” he said. “Between the city of Pittsfield’s resources and the rest of the county, our community was very well prepared for what in store for us, even though it wasn’t as devastating as we thought it would be. We were much better off because of this Homeland Security funding resource.”

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