By Aaron Gifford
The Post-Standard
NEW YORK — E-911 center directors in Central New York are optimistic that the state will eventually follow through with a wireless network linking local police, ambulance and firefighters despite the state’s move canceling the original contract.
The original plan, drafted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, called for a series of radio towers between the Buffalo area and Long Island, covering even the most rural areas of the state for the primary purpose of linking state police, state park police and state Department of Environmental Conservation police.
But earlier this year, the state Office for Technology canceled a contract for $2.1 billion with the company selected to build the network and started considering communications systems other than radio, including cell phone and Internet technologies.
The emphasis has shifted from one statewide system to multiple systems linking regions or consortiums of counties, said Angela Liotta, speaking for the state Office for Technology.
“After we terminated the program, we looked at the lessons learned,” Liotta said Tuesday. “This is a bottom-up approach.”
With the current systems in Central New York, most police, ambulance crews and firefighters cannot communicate with other agencies by radio on their way to or from an emergency, though E-911 dispatchers can relay instructions between the agencies.
“We don’t need to be involved in the chatter between the agencies,” said Mike Allen, Oswego County E-911 center director and chairman of an emergency communications consortium representing Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego counties.
The consortium met in Wampsville recently. All said they will move forward with plans to upgrade their systems, totaling $150 million for five counties, but they will seek as much state and federal aid as possible to limit the impact on local taxpayers.
He said the goal is for all five counties to use a truncated system of shared UHF frequencies. With the current systems, state troopers and sheriff’s deputies often carry two or three different radios so they can call their counterparts when they respond to calls in towns that border another county.
Madison County is already committed to upgrading its communication towers to the tune of about $18 million. Some of the existing equipment is more than 30 years old.
There have been instances when pagers had not been alerted to an emergency and volunteer firefighters in the southern end of the county were called to staff stations because the towers weren’t reliable enough to summon them on short notice.
Copyright 2009 Post-Standard
All Rights Reserved