Thursday, August 30, 2007 1:37

Placer County upgrades emergency communications system

By: Jim Ruffalo, Journal Correspondent

Among the lessons learned the hard way as a result of the 9-11 disaster was that emergency response agencies had a very difficult time communicating with each other. In fact, New York firefighters from different units couldn't even electronically communicate with each other despite being in the same World Trade Center lobby at the same time.

Since that dark day, public safety agencies throughout the country have been working hard to upgrade those communications facilities, and according to many local sources, Placer County is way ahead of most places in that department. |

Local Office of Emergency Services coordinator Dick Simmons said the department is far advanced.  "The county is light years ahead of where we were just a short time ago," Simmons said.

Rich Colwell, the county's chief assistant CEO, says that's no accident.  "Even before 9-11, we started work on a three-phase operation to upgrade the ability of emergency services agencies to talk to one another," he said.

Colwell said the first phase of the federally mandated P-25 project, costing $1.5 million and completed in 2005, was the planning and initial work on the future network. A big part of that network was the county buying 14 frequencies for exclusive use by the county.

"The price tag on those frequencies came to about $500,000 and are worth today about $5 million," he said.

The second phase was to secure funding for the lengthy and expensive project, and to upgrade the county's communications infrastructure to handle the incoming systems.

Board of Supervisors chairman Bruce Kranz knows full well the problems of inter-agency communications in Placer County, having served in the state parks system for more than three decades. That's why he's an advocate of the so-called "Backbone," a complete rebuilding and reconfiguration of the local emergency communications systems' infrastructure.

"With all of the mountains, canyons and hills in a large part of the county, Backbone is important, and that's why the board voted to make the large investment, especially in computers, repeaters and digital centers" he said. "Backbone is also necessary because state agencies have so many systems in use, so much so that State Parks actually leases phone lines just so it can communicate in some parts of this area."

According to Colwell, that $1.7 million Backbone phase was completed last year, and will eventually also provide electronic communications frequencies for the use of Placer County Water Agency, Caltrans and local schools.

"Which brought us to the final, and biggest phase," he said, referring to the actual construction of moving a mostly analog system into the wonderful world of digital.

"We figure it'll cost about $21 million to complete, and we've already obtained $3 million, and have a bit more than that on the way here," he said, then explained that the bulk of those funds were generated by governmental grants.

Clark Moots, the county's director of administration services, says the third phase means "converting all of our sites to digital, and, frankly, moving toward interoperability is as important as anything we're doing."

Colwell is also a big fan of "interoperability," which he defines as: "multiple jurisdictional agencies communicating with each other seamlessly."

With the county already "ahead of the curve," as Colwell put it, smaller local agencies may be hard-pressed to keep pace.

Penryn Fire Chief Dave Ebert says his district's communications system is "pretty good right now, but as things get busier here, we'll have to improve our interoperability capabilities with all the other local (agencies)."

Ebert says his department will have to upgrade to "become digital compliant with federal mandates" and added that the Penryn and Newcastle areas received some FEMA grant money to start those improvements.

"But it's very costly, about $85,000 just for Penryn," he added, but quickly pointed out "it makes good sense to be consistent with our adjacent agencies, especially when it comes to requiring technical help."

Ebert said his district's preliminary cost estimates run about $171,000 for the mandated upgrades, and also pointed out the high cost of the equipment itself, saying that a single, hand-held radio runs close to $1,800.

"That estimate catches your eye right away, seeing as how our whole annual budget runs less than $600,000. Fortunately, the county is coming up with some helpful financing structures for us," Ebert said.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff's Office is also surging ahead of the curve, especially after unveiling its new communications operation in the heart of the new Auburn Justice Center.

"It's a multi-year project, but we're absolutely on track," claimed Don Hutchinson, the sheriff's captain in charge of administrative services.

"We'll be completely P-25 compliant in no more than two years, and totally compliant with all of the upgrades in about five years," he added.

Having the Placer County Sheriff's Office communications system complaint also brings most of the unincorporated fire agencies and ambulance services closer to having full interoperability, because the Sheriff's Office does the emergency dispatching for most of those agencies.

But Auburn's fire department has its dispatching done by Calfire's Grass Valley Command Center. And, according to Auburn Fire Chief Mark D'Ambrogi, there's some work to be done there.

"We're still on VHF here, but there are ways for us to communicate with other agencies," he said.

One way is to go through Calfire's Command Center, and another is to use a Gateway-like operation, wherein a special system allows cooperating agencies to install a radio unit into Gateway, which then utilizes a computer to allow the various agencies to talk back and forth during an emergency.

"That's how we operated during the recent Hells Angels incident at the fairgrounds," said Auburn Police Captain Jim Weldon.

Weldon said the Folsom Police Department brought in its mobile Gateway system, parked it behind City Hall, and all of the cooperation agencies plugged in one of their radios to provide instant communications.

"It was a great example of what's possible," he added.

Possibilities are one thing, but just where is Auburn when it comes to the brave new technological world?

"We're planning for it right now," police Lt. Scott Burns said, then admitted that it could be close to a decade before his department gets to the front of that aforementioned communications curve.

Burns said the biggest reason for the delay is the costs, "which easily could run into seven-figures for us. What we're doing now is reviewing all of the technological developments, seeing what's out there. And by doing it, we'll probably save some money because that equipment keeps changing," he said.

Jim Ruffalo can be reached at jmruffalo@yahoo.com .