First responders ready to work together
By Gordon Russell
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Leaders of four metropolitan parishes on Monday unveiled a digital radio system that will allow easy communication between first responders from each parish and even around the country, making the system the first of its kind in the nation.
The near-complete collapse of the local communications network during Hurricane Katrina was blamed for much of the chaos that ensued. Officials in different parishes had difficulty talking with one another, and police districts lost contact with one another thanks to equipment failures.
The new $32 million system, which operates on multiple frequencies, will allow first responders in Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes to communicate merely by switching their radios to designated group channels. Just about any police radio should work with the system, officials said.
Law enforcement agencies have been using the new system, most of it paid for with federal disaster aid and other federal grants, for about a week. It is designed with various redundancies to keep it from failing in a crisis like Katrina, according to Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security under New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.
For instance, the main server for the system is in Gretna, but a backup server in Baton Rouge is ready at all times. In addition, Ebbert said, communications towers have been reinforced to withstand sustained winds of up to 150 mph.
All equipment is now stored at elevations high enough to protect it from flooding, said F.G. Dowden, a top aide to Ebbert who spearheaded the project. Likewise, generators and fuel sufficient to operate the radio system for at least a week is stored above potential flood heights, Dowden said.
“This is a milestone that moves southeast Louisiana from last to first in safety communications,” Ebbert said.
“We’ve had more than our share of negatives these days,” Nagin said. “Here’s a positive that we should celebrate. This is something our citizens can point to and feel good about.”
The new system was unveiled more than three years after Nagin and other officials held a news conference to announce they had won a $7 million demonstration grant from the Department of Homeland Security to create an interoperable system that would serve eight parishes with two levels of redundancy.
The initial design collapsed, however, after then-Nagin aide Greg Meffert accused the Tulane University official leading its implementation of a conflict of interest. The Tulane official, Grant Holcomb, fired back, saying Meffert wanted to take over the project and was looking for a way to discredit him. Ebbert was a backer of the project conceived by Holcomb, and he and Meffert sparred.
In the end, Meffert won out, and Holcomb’s approach was dropped. The imbroglio delayed the implementation of the system by months if not years; eventually, the federal government approved a reprogramming of the grant, and the money was used to pay for the new system. Meffert said last year that Holcomb’s system would not have worked in Katrina, an assertion Holcomb vehemently denied.
Asked Monday about where things went wrong with the initial approach, Nagin said simply: “We ran into some federal laws that did not allow us to go through with the original plans.”
Along with making it easier for agencies in different parishes to communicate during disasters, the new system should improve information-sharing during normal times, officials said. For instance, before the new system was introduced, law enforcement officers in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish could not communicate directly via radio. Instead, they had to relay messages through dispatchers at each agency.
Now, they can speak directly, which should improve detective work, according to Chief Deputy Newell Normand of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
“I believe we’ll hit a lot of long balls with this when it comes to solving crimes,” Normand said.