By Kevin Turner
Florida Times-Union
Copyright 2007 The Florida Times-Union
NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. — Nassau County’s new $7.2 million emergency radio system is up and running. Project managers hope to have the new equipment in the hands of emergency officials beginning next week.
Nassau County emergency officials who’ve tried out the new system said they can’t wait to begin using the new portable radios they will carry on their shoulders or have mounted in cars.
“I was able to talk to the volunteer chief at River Road at the Florida-Georgia border from my house in Oyster Bay,” Fire-Rescue Chief Chuck Cooper said. “It sounded as if we were in the same room. It has better clarity than a phone.”
Cooper said the system will increase the safety of the firefighters and deputies who use it. The previous, out-dated system suffered from signal pollution and poor reception. It also was fraught with “dead spots,” particularly in rural areas, often leaving personnel with no way to call for help.
“For life safety purposes, this gives us a voice and gives us hearing,” Cooper said. “This is a major improvement, without a doubt. This will add safety and probably save someone’s life. You can put a price on a radio system, but you can’t put a price on someone’s father, mother, son or daughter.”
Undersheriff Carl Woodle said Nassau County deputies also look forward to getting the new radios.
“I’ve been able to monitor it some,” Woodle said. “We’ve heard the techs talking to each other portable to portable in some of the areas where we’ve always had problems, and their reception is pretty good. I know there’s been situations where we’ve been in areas and we couldn’t communicate.”
Nassau County Public Safety Communications System Manager Terry Forehand was hired in June. He’s coordinated the installation and management of the radio system since. Forehand said Thursday only minor details remain to be ironed out, and he plans to begin training 911 dispatchers on the new radio system next week.
“A lot of Sheriff’s Office deputies ask me, ‘When are we getting our radios?’ They’re ready for them. Everybody’s ready,” Forehand said.
The new system is based on the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International “Project 25,” or P25, digital standard. That standard is important because radio systems that can’t communicate with each other can create problems when disasters strike, Deputy Nassau County Fire Rescue Chief Sam Young said.
Motorola began installing the system Jan. 12, 2006, and wrapped up in December.
The project includes new communications equipment on towers in Bryceville, Callahan, Fernandina Beach, Hilliard and Yulee.
Motorola crews built the system’s “master site” at the base of a tall communications tower behind the old Nassau County Jail on Florida A1A. The master site determines which towers should be used to transmit signals from one location to another.
The current system’s hardware is located in the Nassau County Sheriff’s administrative building, long known to be prone to water leaks and mold contamination.
The new system, however, is housed in new, prefabricated portable buildings behind the Sheriff’s Office in Yulee, at the base of the nearby main tower nearby, and at each of the four other towers, Forehand said. The six new buildings are protected by alarms, heavy walls and doors.
The master site tracks which radio is assigned to what person, allowing individual radio-to-radio communication. Also, if a radio falls into the wrong hands, it can be easily be disabled by the system.
Motorola’s contract required the new system to cover 95 percent of Nassau County, but testing has revealed the new radios will get clear signals in more than 99 percent of the county, Forehand said.
“Motorola went through the coverage test and did a grid map of the whole county. We’ve been testing pretty extensively for a couple of months now. We gave handhelds to the volunteer fire chiefs and asked them to try to find dead spots. They went all over the place,” Forehand said. “There’s portable radio coverage in Bryceville and there used to not be.”
After training, the next task will be to distribute more than 600 handheld, vehicle console and shoulder radios to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office, Fire Rescue and Emergency Management departments, he said.
For the most part, those departments’ employees will find using the new system is much like using the old one, except for its new capabilities, Forehand said.
“They’ll be able to make a private call to a single radio. They can pick the sheriff’s radio and talk only to him,” he said.
The improved technology won’t get in the way of the people who use it, said Tim Matthews, principal staff engineer and engineering team leader for Motorola.
“Most of this is transparent to users,” Matthews said. “They push the button to talk and release to listen, like they’re doing now.”
The system also has room to grow. The Sheriff’s Office used to have two channels.
They now have 16 channels and that can be expanded further, he said.
The system has many backups and alarms. When the power goes off, a power generator at the affected tower switches on and an alarm sounds. There’s even an alarm when an unauthorized door in one of the portable buildings opens. Motorola employees will monitor the system from Chicago and alert Forehand whenever there’s cause for concern.
The installation of the radio system culminates four years of lobbying by Nassau County emergency officials for a new system. Nassau County Fire Rescue, the Sheriff’s Office and the Fernandina Beach Police first met in June 2004 to recommend an emergency radio system. A consulting firm worked with county officials for most of 2005, reviewing communications needs and suggesting network options.
The county awarded the contract to Motorola in September, but didn’t have the money to pay for it after failing to land a $6 million Department of Homeland Security grant.
So the county borrowed $5 million from SunTrust Bank. Another $1.4 million comes from county fire rescue and law enforcement impact fees. Nassau County Senior Administrative Services Analyst Cathy Lewis said the remaining money came from $365,000 from moving violations fines, $268,000 from a federal Assistance to Firefighters grant and $780,000 from the county’s 1-cent tax fund.
Talks are under way for the Fernandina Beach Police Department to also use the new radio system, Forehand said.