Copyright 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By JOHN COOK P-I reporter
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Washington is susceptible to all sorts of natural disasters - from the magnitude-6.8 Nisqually Quake that rattled Seattle five years ago this week to the Mount St. Helens lahars that destroyed miles of roads and railway during the 1980 eruption.
Because of those dangers, the state’s Emergency Management Division is testing a new mobile communications system that uses voice-over-Internet connections by satellite - a technology that could allow firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to talk with one another even if cellular, telephone or radio networks are damaged or non-existent.
“This is our initial communications push to make sure that we can start responding to the disaster very quickly,” said Don Miller, telecommunications and warning systems manager at the state’s Emergency Management Division.
Built last summer with assistance from Fall City-based Last Mile Networks, the $175,000 mobile communications unit will be tested during a tsunami exercise at Camp Rilea, Ore., in the next couple of months. The 12-foot trailer includes a satellite dish, collapsible radio antenna and numerous power supplies (diesel, battery, wind and solar).
The goal is to have the trailer in use during the wildfire season this summer, providing voice, video and data connectivity to supervisors and incident commanders in remote areas. The system also includes a VHF-AM radio, so firefighters on the ground can instruct air crews where to drop water.
“This gives them the initial communications package without me having to wire in anything,” said Miller, adding that a variety of phones can be tied into the mobile unit. The technology allows phone users and radio operators to have their communications sent by satellite to the private telephone switch at the Emergency Management Division’s center in Camp Murray, he said. The agency also has a backup switch in Fall City.
A satellite system that utilizes voice over Internet would have been extremely useful during the Nisqually Quake or Eastern Washington fires, which Miller said resulted in overloaded cell sites and telephone networks.
Hours after the earthquake, officials at the state’s emergency operations center could only make calls by using special government emergency access codes and cards, he said.
“This gets us away from what we call the `busy/out’ syndrome or the lack of cellular site coverage in mountainous areas when we go to fires and floods and things like that,” he said.
Peter Erickson, vice president of business development at CoCo Communications, a Seattle company whose networking software helps first responders communicate during disasters, said government agencies are increasingly looking to deploy new technologies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina.
“Agencies are looking for ways to provide the remote ability to connect,” Erickson said. “What is important is not only the ability to provide connectivity, but the ability to coordinate multiple different first-responder resources in or around any type of incident or disaster.”
Miller said that is what the new mobile unit is designed to do, using satellite and voice over Internet to quickly set up disaster response centers with full communications capabilities anywhere in the state.
“This really extends out our telephone capabilities to a remote location,” he said.