Is your public safety organization planning to fail?
There are a variety of things we don’t see in our day to day lives, but they’re always there — at least we think they are.
We don’t see water flowing through the pipes in our homes, but it’s there when we turn on a faucet or take a shower. The electricity that powers our homes isn’t visible either, until we turn on a light, or microwave some popcorn before sitting down to watch a movie. Gasoline for our vehicles, food for our tables, and medicine for our ailments; all readily available at a number of different places throughout the communities we call home.
As Americans, we take many of the aforementioned conveniences for granted.
The same can be said of our nation’s public safety communications network. Whether you live in a small rural community, a mid-sized suburban area, or a sprawling urban metropolis, the local, state, and federal public safety agencies charged with protecting the residents of these communities rely on a stable, scalable, and resilient public safety communications network to do their jobs safely and effectively. You’d be hard pressed to find a law enforcement official, firefighter, or emergency medical service provider who didn’t believe the ability to communicate was vital to their personal safety, as well as the safety of those they’re assisting.
Most public safety agencies in the United States have some type of formalized training program in place for new or ‘recruit’ personnel, existing or ‘veteran’ personnel, and specialized personnel. In some cases, in service training is provided when material pertinent to all personnel needs to be disseminated. Many agencies send their personnel out of state to receive specialized or “topic specific” training not available in their own jurisdiction. Whatever the purpose of the training, the overall objective is relatively simple; improve the knowledge base of the trainee and make him/her more comfortable with the use of discipline specific tools in their respective field. Communications, and the ability to communicate properly, are some of those tools.
With so many negative lessons learned by first responders (relating to communications and interoperability) and such a tremendous emphasis on training nationwide, why are the majority of our nation’s public safety professionals not incorporating fundamentals of communications into their standard training programs? Furthermore, why isn’t the development and inclusion of a communications plan standard practice in all public safety exercise planning?
An August 2015 article in “GovernmentTechnology” magazine stated the following:
“You can’t go 60 seconds in a conversation about public safety communications without someone using the word “interoperability.” Plus, the number of interpretations — and misinterpretations — of what it actually means is directly related to the number of participants in the conversation. That’s because “interoperability” means something different to the industry’s many facets. Disasters, man-made or natural, can happen to any city, county or municipality, regardless of size. In public safety, we throw around “interoperability” as if it were a panacea to solve all issues during a disaster or large event. However, at the disaster exercises I’ve assessed, the topic of interoperability often appears prominently in after-action reports, where technicians are observed spending the vast majority of the exercise huddled around an integration device trying to get it to work. When it comes to real-world disasters, the lack of interoperability typically translates into response agencies not being able to communicate across radio systems.”
All public safety disciplines need to incorporate some aspect of communications planning in the development phase of any practical exercise. Incident Action Plan (IAP) development and location specific pre-plans for “real world” incidents also need to include a comprehensive communications plan before they can be considered complete.
Then (2007) Associate Director of the Center for Wireless and Broadband Networking and professor of electrical engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University Jon M. Peha stated the following in an article he authored for “Issues in Science and Technology”:
“Although the number of lives lost on 9/11 was especially great, there is nothing unusual about loss of life due to failures in the communications systems used by first responders: firefighters, police, paramedics, and members of the National Guard. Such failures occur across the country during large disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, and during emergencies too small to make the news, such as police car chases and burning houses. When public safety communications systems do not work, the lives of first responders and the citizens they protect are at risk.”
Failing to include the communications sector in the planning process of any public safety exercise and taking the existing communications footprint in a given jurisdiction for granted can potentially derail the mission of a training evolution. Moreover, it will be virtually impossible to identify weaknesses or deficiencies in the communications system, which could endanger the lives of first responders and civilians during a real world emergency. Agencies using the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and Incident Command System (ICS) forms to manage exercises and real world events can easily incorporate the Emergency Support Function #2 (ESF 2 — Communications) sector into their event by having a FEMA credentialed All Hazards Communications Unit Leader (COML) complete form ICS 205 titled “Incident Radio Communications Plan”. Once completed, this document can be disseminated to designated personnel within the Incident Organization Chart (ICS 207), eliminating questions about operational frequencies and established talk groups for the incident in question. As communications requirements change based on escalation or de-escalation of the incident, communications resources can be enhanced or scaled back accordingly. Minimally, the plan will be reviewed as one operational period ends and another begins.
In the same way law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical service personnel train to deal with the variety of situations they’ll contend with during a given shift, public safety communications personnel must train as well. Leaders in all public safety disciplines (and their personnel) will benefit a great deal by including the communications sector early on in the exercise planning process. The time to “work out the kinks” in a community’s public safety plan is not during an actual emergency.
D. Jeremy DeMar/WeSeeHSE
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For additional information on articles referenced in this content, please see the below links:
