Paul Fallon, Daily Mail Staff

Kanawha County spent between $3 million and $4 million on digital radios for fire departments around the county in 2008, but coverage gaps are keeping most departments from using the equipment.

Nitro Fire Chief Mark Jarrett, whose department is using the new radios, says he hopes to see other departments on board soon.

“We just think it’s a great system,” Jarrett said.

Officials with the county and its municipalities have been working about three years to get the digital equipment in the hands of first responders and working correctly.

It will allow first responders to communicate with other emergency agencies in the state, said David Erwin, operation center coordinator with the Kanawha County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Erwin is also chairman of the Statewide Interoperable Executive Committee.

The digital radio system will replace the old analogue system that has been used for years, Erwin said.

But the digital handheld devices don’t work in several parts of the county, including some school districts and urban areas.

“Right now we still don’t have 100 percent coverage inside the county,” Erwin said. “The statewide system is still under construction.”

For example, there is an area near Rutledge Road off Greenbrier Street where the hand-held digital radios cannot transmit to the Kanawha County Metro 911 Center, Charleston Fire Chief Chuck Overstreet said.

First responders cannot use their hand-held devices to communicate with the 911 Center when responding to a call in the area surrounding Capital High School, Overstreet said.

However, they can use the radios to call someone in the vehicles, Erwin said. The first responder in the vehicle then can relay the message to the 911 Center.

This is because the hand-held digital units do not have as much power as the mobile units in the vehicles, Erwin said.

Erwin said there should be a person stationed in the vehicle at all times even if the hand-held radios could transmit straight to the 911 Center. This is standard operating procedure for first responders in the county.

Erwin said those using the hand-held radios should not be in direct contact with the 911 Center. Instead, information should be relayed to an incident commander who then passes that information on to the 911 Center.

This is to keep the 911 dispatchers from becoming overwhelmed with information coming in from all of the first responders.

However, Erwin acknowledged that not having the capability to talk directly to the 911 Center in those areas could be a problem.

“Eventually these problems will be corrected,” he said.

Adding a tower to cover that area would correct the problem, Erwin said. He is also looking at technology that would allow first responders to use hand-held devices to communicate with mobile units in the vehicle.

The radio in the mobile unit then would relay the message to the 911 Center, he said.

However, Erwin was unsure when the new towers or the new technology would be put into place.

There are some gaps in the digital service, such as in the Sissonville area, that will be closed by next summer when additional towers are completed.

Despite the coverage gaps, Erwin said the digital radio system is still much better than the old analogue system, which is still used by the majority of first responders in the county.

That’s because there were many areas around the county and in Charleston where first responders using the hand-held analogue radio systems could not contact the 911 Center.

The only agencies currently using the digital radio system are the Charleston Fire Department, the traffic division for the Charleston Police Department and the Nitro and St. Albans fire departments, Erwin said.

All other agencies are using the analogue radios until the coverage gaps are eliminated, he said.

Jarrett, the Nitro fire chief, said his agency has been using the new system for about three months and he likes it much better than the old one.

His firefighters ran into numerous “dead spots” around the town when using the old hand-held devices.

“Sometimes we would have a guy out in front of the fire station with a hand-held radio and they couldn’t talk to the 911 Center,” Jarrett said.

The department has only one major dead spot with the new radios – inside the Mardi Gras Casino and Resort, he said. Officials think this may have something to do with the large number of electronic devices in the casino, Jarrett said.

Department officials are trying to isolate what is causing the new radios not to transmit inside the resort. The more powerful mobile devices in the vehicles can transmit from the resort’s parking lot, Jarrett said.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s wrong in the casino, but as far as the overall system, this is an improvement,” Jarrett said.

Overstreet also expressed concern with the number of buttons on the new radios. He said if a firefighter accidentally hits the wrong button, it will change the channel.

Erwin said that can be addressed by training.

“A radio is a piece of equipment, like a gun or a bulletproof vest, that requires ongoing training,” he said.

The county obtained between $3 million and $4 million in early 2008 to purchase the radios for the 26 fire departments in the county, emergency medical services and law enforcement around the county.

The county did not have to purchase the digital units for Charleston because the city had already obtained a grant for the equipment, he said.

The city of Charleston received about $430,000 in federal grant money in early 2007 to purchase the hand-held and vehicle devices, Erwin said.

Contact writer Paul Fallon at [email protected] or 304-348-4817.

September 14, 2011

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