By Tom Berry, Murray Ledger & Times Staff Writer
Murray, Ky. — Calloway County emergency response officials are continuing efforts to establish interagency communications capabilities while also trying to find ways to fund the region’s hazardous materials response team.

County Emergency Management Director Bill Call said during a meeting of the Local Emergency Planning Committee Thursday afternoon, that the county is pushing forward with establishment of new open command radio frequencies that will enable various response organizations inside and outside to the county to freely communicate.

In the event of a countywide crisis when outside emergency response units would arrive to assist, Call said it would be necessary for the county to be prepared with a system that would allow all responders to communicate flawlessly.

“They are going to expect us to be ready and right now we’re not. That’s it in a nutshell,” Call said.

Sheriff Bill Marcum also pointed out that his office is looking into boosting signal repeater capabilities that will allow better communications between emergency responders locally. In some areas of the county, radio-to-radio or radio to base traffic is often weak. The county is now taking steps to get funding assistance from state or federal officials to resolve both problems as soon as possible.

Calloway County’s  9-1-1 emergency operations center has recently been approved by the state as a primary call center allowing local emergency traffic to be routed directly to the sheriff’s office. Previously, most county emergency calls were channeled through Kentucky State Police. However the system is not completely ready for reception of all signals, such as some cell systems.

In other business, Call said about $13,500 is needed this year to keep the Region 1 Hazardous Materials Unit active. The unit is called out to assist with chemical spills and other types of threats to the public in connection to hazardous materials. Call said he will soon propose that Calloway County Fiscal Court, the Murray City Council and Murray State University split the cost. Collection of costs from industry, business or individuals responsible for hazardous chemical spills is already underway.

Call said other hazmat units across the state are also having funding difficulties and losing the unit is not desirable.

“So we don’t know where it’s going to go in Calloway County,” Call said.

Also, Call pointed out some details reported from the Community Right to Know Summary concerning hazardous chemicals incidents and reporting in Calloway. Currently there are five main entities that report each year concerning possible threats to the environment including Vanderbilt Chemical, Murray Water, Murray Wastewater, Morningstar Foods and BellSouth; a sixth is under consideration. Call reported “no significant chemical incidents” so far this year with some minor incidents occurring and dealt with by emergency responders including the discovery of an unknown chemical in a dorm room at MSU, a cleaning solution spill from a truck on Industrial Road and gasoline spillage at a station on Chestnut Street.

Deputy Emergency Director Jeff Steen reported success in several emergency response drills testing the county’s capabilities in responding to various types of emergencies. Steen said responders demonstrated “good command and control” of efforts to deal with the aftermath of a moderate earthquake, rescuing an occupant in a burning building at MSU, dealing with a major traffic incident and rescuing a trapped and injured hiker in a remote area.

However it was noted there were some communications difficulties between responding agencies that will need to be dealt with.

“We have to find ways to bridge that,” Steen said.

Designated channels now used by police, firefighters, emergency medical, rescue teams and other responders would remain intact, but a separate command channel or channels would be designated for utilization by all agencies in a crisis.

Posted with permission from the Murray Ledger & Time.