Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Emergency Workers Imperiled by Loss of Fund, Schumer Says

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 00:31:26 -0500

Emergency Workers Imperiled by Loss of Fund, Schumer Says
By COREY KILGANNON

Published: February 15, 2004

A fund that could have helped New York City improve emergency communications
between its Fire and Police Departments has been eliminated from the federal
budget, Senator Charles E. Schumer said yesterday.

By cutting a $54 million nationwide grant to help municipalities improve
communications between their emergency response agencies, including an estimated
$6 million that could have gone to New York City, the Department of Homeland
Security "pulled the rug out from under our cops and firefighters," Mr. Schumer
said at a news conference in front of a firehouse on East 51st Street that lost
10 firefighters on Sept. 11, 2001.

To illustrate the need to revamp the city's emergency radio systems, Mr. Schumer
cited a report, done for the Fire Department, that faulted radio communications
after the attack. Mr. Schumer said the failures were partly to blame for the
deaths of about 120 of the 343 firefighters who died in the attack on the World
Trade Center.

The lack of radio communication between police and fire officials came into
sharp relief during the investigation into the city's response to the terrorist
attack. After the trade center's south tower collapsed, a police helicopter unit
sent a radio message saying that the north tower also looked ready to fall, some
21 minutes before it did. Many police officers heard the message and were able
to escape, but firefighters' radios were not linked to police radios and
apparently never heard the warnings. At least 121 firefighters, most in striking
distance of safety, died when the north tower fell. The city's police and fire
commissioners have since moved to improve communications between the two
departments.

Mr. Schumer said failing to finance improvements to the radio system leaves the
city vulnerable to another disaster, and he said the federal grant program was
the only one specifically set up to help integrate emergency radio systems.

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer said yesterday that Department of Homeland Security
officials told the senator's office last week that the fund that provided $54
million last year for improving radio interoperability would not be repeated in
this year's antiterrorism budget. The spokesman said that New York City would
have been eligible for up to $6 million of the allocation had it been repeated
this year .

Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said
yesterday that the money was not eliminated, but rather was consolidated into
the department's full domestic preparedness budget to be allocated to state
governments to spend as they choose.

"The Department of Homeland Security has provided $7 billion to $8 billion to
state and local governments within the past seven months," he said. "The
president has requested another $3.6 billion for fiscal year 2005, some of which
can be used for interoperability communications."

A Fire Department spokesman, Francis X. Gribbon, said yesterday that fire
officials can share certain radio channels with police officials, but that
overhauling communications structures and creating a comprehensive plan for
emergency commanders to communicate without interfering with intradepartmental
communications is an immense task. But it is a task that fire officials are
undertaking with other city emergency response agencies, including the Police
Department and the Office of Emergency Management, he said.

"The department is working on a protocol to link us to the police," Mr. Gribbon
said, "but it's very complicated to take the disparate radio systems of various
agencies and allow them to merge at an emergency scene on a large scale with
many channels."

Among other improvements made since Sept. 11, he said, the department replaced
its radios a year ago with new ones that "give us more capacity for
interoperability with the Police Department."

"While the department now has new radios that offer us improvements both for
internal uses and interoperability with other agencies, more money would
certainly be crucial in helping us further enhance the technology and the
protocol,'' Mr. Gribbon said.

As for firefighters being able to communicate with police helicopters in a large
emergency, "that issue has been resolved," he said

A Police Department spokesman said yesterday that he could not immediately
provide information on radio plans.

Robert Lawson, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said yesterday that
the mayor, while visiting Washington last week, stressed to government officials
the importance of getting the city its share of homeland security funds. "The
mayor appreciates Senator Schumer's efforts,'' Mr. Lawson said.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/nyregion/15response.html

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