Like many sailors in the Navy, I had the collateral duty of damage control. I participated in shipboard firefighting training on every duty day.
One early morning, the bell rang and it wasn’t a drill. A lit cigarette discarded by a drunken shipmate had been left smoldering in an aft compartment. My damage control team sprung into action, grabbing our gear and racing to the scene.
Men tripped over the hoses snaking everywhere. Flashlights cut through the smoky darkness. Oxygen masks muffled the shouts of the firefighters. Confusion seemed rampant. In the midst of all the chaos, I looked up from my position and casually flipped on the lights.
Duh! No one thought to turn on the lights. I laughed at the lunacy. We were idiots for fumbling around in the dark.
I use this story to illustrate how people tend to forget the easy stuff in the midst of an emergency. The same can be said about the radios the public service agencies use to coordinate with each other. When it comes to a multi-agency chase or incident, reason goes out the window.
Every time there’s a car chase or something similar, police departments and other first-responder agencies plead their case for a coordinated radio system they can all use to communicate. Cops can’t talk to firefighters and vice versa. Instead, they have to relay messages through dispatchers, causing delays. Their preferred solution has always been a new, multi-million dollar communications system.
Like my light-switch solution, there’s a far more practical and affordable solution. It’s called simplex. Simplex is a radio term for when one radio talks directly to other radios in the area. First responders on the scene can talk to other responders in the area directly. No million-dollar radio systems are needed. In fact, no towers are needed at all. Radio A talks to Radio B,C, or D. Even kiddie walkie-talkies can do this.
First responders simply (no pun intended!) need to pick a frequency they will use for communication on the scene. Then they just tune to that frequency when they’re working together. It’s simple, effective, and far cheaper than these boondoggle radio systems being pimped by some major communications vendors.
It’s as easy as flipping a switch.
But you’re thinking like a taxpayer, not a tax-money squanderer….
The problem is, getting everybody to agree on the simplex frequency. What makes it even tougher is if, say, the police in one county are on UHF and the firefighters are on VHF Hi-band. Now you can’t do simplex between police and fire just because the equipment isn’t compatible.
Same kinds of things happen when you’re trying to work across county or state lines as well. On a big emergency you’ll wind up with agencies on scene who use every conceivable combination of UHF, VHF Hi-band, VHF Low-band, 800 mhz and God only knows what else.