For better or worse, the fate of the 10-MHz D Block and the proposed public-private partnership that would build a nationwide broadband wireless network for first responders has become a hot topic in our nation‘s capital. The start of the comment period on the FCC‘s latest notice of proposed rulemaking promises to be just the beginning of spirited debate and lobbying on the issue over the next several months.

While most of the wireless industry understandably will be focused on the broadband aspects of this matter, the decisions made also promise to have a significant impact on public-safety narrowband operations in the 700-MHz band — a matter that has received virtually no attention from the mainstream media.

The fact is, the spectral home for the proposed 700-MHz broadband wireless network for public safety is occupied in some parts of the country by narrowband public-safety communications systems. Obviously, before there can be a nationwide broadband network on these airwaves, these incumbent narrowband networks have to be relocated.

If this sounds conceptually similar to 800-MHz rebanding, it is. Thankfully, it should not be as complicated, as there are relatively few agencies that have deployed 700-MHz narrowband systems and they‘ve all been installed recently with fairly new equipment that can be relocated more easily, so the technical issues are not nearly as great.

Still, it has to get done. In its 700-MHz order last summer, the FCC charged the public safety broadband licensee — a designation later given to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust — to devise a relocation plan in conjunction with the commercial D Block winner. Within 30 days after licenses were awarded from the 700-MHz auction, the two entities were supposed to present a relocation plan to the FCC, with the D Block winner agreeing to pay no more than $10 million for narrowband relocation.

Of course, there was no D Block winner in the auction, which means there is no funding source to pay for the relocation of narrowband 700-MHz networks. Meanwhile, the FCC has taken no action to relax the rule requiring narrowband 700 MHz systems to relocate by Feb. 17, 2009, when television broadcasters nationwide also have to vacate the spectrum.

In other words, public-safety agencies with 700-MHz narrowband systems have less than nine months to relocate these networks, but “there is absolutely no assurance that they‘re going to get reimbursed until this is all done,” PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen said during an interview with MRT. Indeed, lawyers for some public safety entities have told their elected officials to be prepared to pay the relocation costs based on the current uncertainty.

McEwen noted that the PSST is responsible for developing a 700-MHz relocation plan, despite the fact that the PSST currently has no source of revenue. Furthermore, McEwen said the PSST‘s initial research indicates that the $10 million figure cited by the FCC will not be enough to reimburse all public safety agencies operating in the band.

While FCC commissioners have hardly mentioned the narrowband-relocation aspect of the 700-MHz band plan, it has not been forgotten. In its NPRM published this week, the FCC asks commenters to provide input on a number of questions regarding narrowband relocation, including whether the $10 million figure is appropriate, whether the D Block winner should provide relocation funds, whether the relocation should occur by Feb. 17, 2009, and whether the PSST should continue to play a role.

In addition, the NPRM asks whether reimbursement — from whatever source — should be provided for systems deployed after Aug. 30, 2007, the FCC‘s previous cutoff date for reimbursement. Extending the deadline would increase the cost of relocation, but not doing so could put an unwanted damper on narrowband deployment plans in the band.

There are legitimate arguments on each of these items. Hopefully, commenters will not get so caught up in the broadband aspects of this debate that the narrowband issues are ignored. The FCC needs to get this right in both areas; otherwise, we face potential delays in the deployment of both narrowband and broadband communications for first responders in this valuable band.

Every fire department with railroad tracks within its jurisdiction or mutual aid response area needs to be fully aware of what hazards are being transported on those tracks. According to rail authorities, there are even more reasons to be prepared if a fire department has a rail yard with tank cars and tanker trucks within its territory.

Railroad tank cars frequently carry hazardous materials that are categorized as toxic by inhalation, or TIH. These chemicals, including chlorine and anhydrous ammonia could have disastrous affects on first responders and surrounding communities if leaked or spilled by accident or terrorist attack.

The Dow Chemical Co. and Union Pacific Railroad are working together to improve community awareness and preparedness along chemical transportation routes. Initially, Dow implemented the Responsible Care Community Awareness and Emergency Response program for communities where it has manufacturing plants. Subsequently, Dow teamed with the Union Pacific Railroad to sponsor Transportation Community Awareness and Emergency Response, or TRANSCAER, Training Tours. The tours offer emergency responders free, hands-on training about railroad hazards and safety protocols.

This is the third year that TRANSCAER has offered the one-day sessions along its key transportation routes. The tour began in April in Alexandria, La., and ended the first week of May west of Chicago.

According to Mike Stephenson, emergency services and security leader for Dow’s New Jersey properties, the TRANSCAER team stopped in 10 communities along the route and trained more than 560 community emergency responders.

“It‘s part of our continuing commitment to reach out to the first responders and get them well prepared for better response and safety of the community,” he said.

The training tour is made up of 10 rail cars, each with a specific purpose. Two railcars are set up as classrooms, while several others offer hands-on equipment training, hazmat training and advanced interactive emergency response drills.

When the TRANSCAER train arrives in a rail yard, local participants are separated into five different modules. The basic tank car module demonstrates how emergency responders can identify and resolve slow leaks with ordinary tools. An empty chlorine tank car is available for closer inspection. A third module focuses on how to respond to TIH events and flammable gases. The fourth module puts attendees on a flat car fitted with several samples of protective housings found atop tank cars. Instructors demonstrate how to deal with common water and air leaks. The fifth module deals with tanker-truck emergencies that can be found in rail yards.

Stephenson said that each of the instructors on this train also is an emergency responder who is on call 24/7 in the event of a railroad incident. “These instructors are the same faces that firefighters are going to see responding to their call,” he said.

Several other railroads offer similar training, check out TRANSCAER for other training opportunities.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a memorial service for active and retired firefighters who had died in the past year. During the memorial service, held at the Elgin (Ill.) Fire Department‘s museum, 12 fire departments in the state’s Mutual Aid Box Alarm System joined to remember their deceased firefighters.

As the service ended and the sound of the last alarm bell tolled across the stillness of the gathering, a solo trumpeter gently began to play “Taps.”

This weekend, Memorial Day ceremonies will honor veterans who have served in the U.S. military. Among those honored are many who also served as firefighters in their communities. Firefighters and soldiers have similar missions to serve and protect. Both professions are patriotic, with ceremonies that include the American flag, the Pledge of Allegiance and even color guards. Both require a high level of personal commitment and, if necessary, the ultimate sacrifice; it‘s no wonder that each profession is drawn to the other.

Among the fallen double-duty firefighter/soldiers, remember William “Bill” Bailey III, a firefighter with the Bellevue (Neb.) Fire Department and specialist in the National Guard. In May 2007 Bailey“>Bailey was providing security for military convoys near Taji, Iraq, when an explosive device detonated near his vehicle. According to reports, Bailey died saving the lives of two other soldiers. He was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star posthumously.

Also remember Pfc. Larry Parks, who was killed last June in Parks“>small-arms fire in Arab Jabor after being in Iraq for only 38 days. Parks had been a Newburg, Pa., volunteer firefighter for eight years. He first volunteered when he was 16 years old, after hanging around the nearby fire station all the time.

Remember not only those we have lost, but also those who still serve. Recently, Maryland National Guard Staff Sgt. Matthew Miller received the Bronze Star Medal of Valor for saving the life of a 6-year-old girl and an Iraqi soldier. Miller, a firefighter with Anne Arundel County (Md.) Fire Rescue, was at an Iraqi checkpoint when he saw the girl and the Iraqi soldier who had been wounded while trying to protect her. The girl had been shot in the neck; but even with limited equipment, Miller and his team were able to save both.

How many lives have you saved or helped in your work? You probably will never know, but those people whose needs you responded to will remember you — even if they don’t know your name. They will remember you because of your personal commitment and passion for the job.

Firefighters touch lives, as do soldiers. This weekend, remember with gratitude those who are gone and those who are far away.

In the April print edition of MRT, contributing writer Lynnette Luna reported on some of the problems fire departments across the country are having with digital radios. A common complaint concerned the inability of the digital vocoder to distinguish between a voice transmission and background noise typically found on the fireground, such as sprayed water, chain saws and personal alarms.

Apparently, this article caused quite a stir, primarily due to comments attributed to ICOM America Vice President Chris Lougee, who not only said that use of a full-rate vocoder would solve the problem, but that TIA is encouraging such use. I heard from a few people on this, including Charles Werner, chief of the Charlottesville (Va.) Fire Department and a member of MRT’s editorial advisory council, who said Lougee is off base, because a full-rate vocoder would be too spectrally inefficient.

“People have this expectation now that a full-rate vocoder is possible … and that we‘re going to check it out, which is not the case,” he said.

But when I talked to Lougee a couple of weeks ago, he stood by his comments, and told me that TIA‘s vocoder task force currently is studying whether enhanced full-rate and enhanced half-rate vocoders would improve the quality of the digital signal in a high-noise environment.

I spoke this week with Craig Jorgensen, APCO P25 Project Director, in an attempt to clear up the confusion. Jorgensen said it already has been decided that all new P25 Phase I radios (operating in 12.5-kHz channels using FDMA technology) will use the enhanced full-rate vocoder and that new Phase II radios (operating in 6.25-kHz channels using two-slot TDMA) will use the enhanced half-rate vocoder.

According to Jorgensen, most manufacturers of Phase I radios “will be able to achieve that objective by the end of 2008.” (Indeed, Lougee told me it is ICOM‘s intention to introduce an enhanced full-rate vocoder into its Phase I radios this year.)

Standards work on both enhanced vocoders already is “earnestly underway,” Jorgensen said. But no decisions will be made until after the International Association of Fire Chiefs finishes its fireground noise study, Jorgensen said. “We want to clearly identify the problems … so we‘re not dealing with folklore information or hearsay.”

Jorgensen cautioned that it might not be possible to completely eliminate the possibility of noise swamping the vocoder. “But we can make improvements, if we have some data … so we can attack it from a scientific approach.”

Mike Heavener, owner of MT Communications, a two-way radio dealer in the Washington, D.C., area, offered a possible solution. He suggested replacing the standard speaker microphone — which resides outside a firefighter‘s breathing mask, making it more prone to the effects of noise — with a throat microphone, which he said has been around since World War II.

But while a throat microphone might be effective in some situations, it too has its limitations, according to Jorgensen.

“When a firefighter‘s low-air alarm goes off, it‘s a mechanical reed, and when that reed begins to vibrate, it‘s also going to vibrate in the throat and bone, so it actually will enhance the problem.”

Jorgensen said that placing the microphone inside the mask is another possible solution. “But you‘d have to figure out how to do that without running wires. There‘s probably a new technology that‘s going to have to be inserted into the mask to make it work.”

The good news for firefighters is that Jorgensen and his colleagues are committed to finding a solution. Speaking of the IAFC report that is expected to be delivered this month, Jorgensen said, “Quite honestly, we don‘t expect that we‘re going to be happy with what we see, and we expect we‘re going to have to implement changes to ensure that firefighters, in particular, are protected.”

As a still-grieving Charleston, S.C., prepares for a memorial next month to honor the nine firefighters who died last year, the analysis and fallout continue.

Last week, the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health released its draft report on the fire. Earlier this week, Chief Rusty Thomas retired. And yesterday, the Charleston Post-Incident Assessment and Enhancement Review Team released its comprehensive Phase 2 report, with minute details on the deaths of the nine firefighters.

The task force reviewed its analysis of the deadly fire with the fallen firefighters‘ immediate-family members, then with a second group of family members. It followed those reviews with a meeting with Charleston firefighters and later with the Charleston city council.

What makes the task force report different from NIOSH’s 55-page draft released last week? The NIOSH draft report is an attempt to reconstruct the fire‘s timeline and the fire department‘s on-scene activities.

The task force‘s in-depth 272-page report includes a timeline, radio transmissions and documentation to support proper procedures. This report also specifies errors and omissions. It is a very difficult and emotional read, especially for anyone with knowledge of the fire service.

The report makes one thing clear — the events leading to these firefighter deaths started long before June 18, 2007. But when did it all start?

Did it begin with cockiness after being awarded an Insurance Service Office Class 1 rating in 1998? Did the “first class” status allow the fire department to rest on its laurels, even though that status applied only to a small portion of Charleston‘s response area? Even the mayor referred to Charleston‘s “first-class department.”

Did the lack of systematic fire inspections allow the Sofa Super Store to connect new buildings and avoid installing required fire sprinklers?

Which is at greater fault: the water department that removed a hydrant in 2004 or the fire department that failed to update its response plans accordingly?

Was assigning battalion chiefs to act as “safety officers” a sufficient replacement for a trained, designated safety officer?

Perhaps it began when the city‘s financial department tightened the budgets, which restricted personnel from traveling to conferences and training programs. Did that cause the lack of officer development programs? Did budgets prohibit the purchase of NFPA-compliant stationwear? That stationwear, along with new PPE and breathing apparatus, are available now, following the recommendations in the Phase 1 report.

The Firefighter Fatality Investigative Report is a must-read for every firefighter, officer and fire chief. There are lessons to be learned from these nine courageous men who died after a long series of errors and omissions. This report also should be mandatory reading for local government officials who need a lesson in the real-life consequences of budget cuts.

Rusty Thomas was shattered when he retired from the position he lived for and loved. He gave up a job, but 11 months ago, nine of his firefighters needlessly gave up their lives, jobs and families.

Nine Charleston firefighters died needlessly on June 18, 2007. Now it’s incumbunt upon every fire department to learn from this report so that those deaths were not in vain.

In 2000, my oldest son, Dale, now a commander in the U.S. Navy, and I wrote a two-part series for Fire Chief magazine entitled “Wave of the Future.” (Click here for parts one and two) We compared and contrasted certain historical developments and organizational characteristics that simultaneously developed within the U.S. military and the U.S. fire service. Then using the future direction of the military at that time, we tried to predict the future direction of the fire service. Of course, these predictions were made in pre-9/11 days, and subsequently the mission of both services has been greatly expanded.

Dale and I rarely have the opportunity for a leisurely conversation, but recently we started to talk about the future tract of officer development. It‘s a given that the long-standing tradition for officer development in the military includes War College, Command and Staff College, and an advanced degree in a related field. These fairly well equate to our Chief Fire Officer Designation, Executive Fire Officer Program, the Harvard Fellowship, and the growing number of master’s degrees offered to fire officers in studies from public administration to executive leadership.

The war on terrorism, however, has produced an unprecedented number of younger military officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned, who have been given greater latitude in problem-solving and local operational jurisdiction in combat. But how will these officers approach the more traditional development path versus the fast-paced decision-making process that they have been exposed to in these combat areas?

Now look at the fire service. While returning veterans from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and Operation Desert Storm have help shape the fire service as it is today, how will the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts shape the fire service of the future? All officers, military and fire service, make split-second decisions based on the best situational information available augmented by their level of experience. The military best describes this decision process as the OODA Loop, so named by USAF Colonel John Boyd on how fighter pilots observe, orient, decide and act in aerial combat. Those who can do it better and faster live to fly another day. The fire service incorporates a similar process into our Incident Command System.

As we welcome this generation of young veterans into the fire service, what will be their expectations and their goals for development into the fire officer ranks? They will expect more intense training under near-operational conditions leading to the experience they will need to be a part of the decision process. Their experiences overseas will help frame this decision-making process, just as my past experience as an Air Force officer in Vietnam has framed mine.

Should we be wary of these young men and women? No, by all means this is the same process by which we were assimilated into the organizational culture of the fire service. But understand that as our future leaders, they will shape the next generation of firefighter / medics that will serve our communities for decades. As chiefs, we need to embrace their experience, listen and learn how to channel their energy into innovative ways to manage our departments. This will be a very positive experience in the development of our future fire officers and chiefs.

Next month, the American fire service will remember the nine Charleston, S.C., firefighters who died in the Sofa Super Store fire on June 18, 2007. The local media will carry reports and tributes. The fire service media, however, will be asking questions.

In the immediate aftermath of the fire, publicized photos and radio transmissions revealed how out of touch with modern firefighting strategy and techniques the Charleston Fire Department was. For example, dispatchers called each fire station for a report of which firefighters reported for duty and which were missing.

Shortly after the fire, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley hired a group of esteemed fire service professionals to investigate and review the fire department and make recommendations. These task force members — who I know and have endorsed for their knowledge and expertise — devoted countless hours to the investigation. They had free access to personnel and the department and made numerous trips to Charleston.

The task force released the Phase 1 report later than first expected, allowing Riley to first review the findings. While the Phase 1 report required serious and immediate changes, the task force also suggested two additional levels of recommendations.

I’ve had many conversations with task force members, and their comments always were restrained but firm — “wait until the fire investigation report comes out” — and implied the report would be straightforward and unpleasant. The report was first due in late fall. Then December. Then February. Now we understand it will be Thursday, May 15.

Nine firefighters died in that fire. The people responsible for their deaths are still working their jobs, still going home to their own families after work and tucking their kids in bed each night. The department has new station uniforms, new 5-inch hose, new training procedures and new SOPs. But too many questions still remain.

Why has the task force tolerated this delay of its hard work? Knowing the caliber of these individuals, I‘m surprised no one has resigned over the repeated delays and excuses for not releasing this report.

According to recent news reports, Charleston‘s beloved Mayor Joe Riley will finally release the report May 15th, eleven months after the nine firefighters died. Thursday night, the Mayor decided to release a draft of the National Institute of Occupational Health & Safety. Was this to try and soften the blow of the Task Force report to be released on May 15th? The Task Force will deliver the final report to the mayor this week and then to the families of the fallen firefighters before it is released to the media.

Nothing will bring the nine fallen firefighters home to their families, but what really is being done to prevent more firefighter deaths in this “Class 1″ department? Something is still smoldering in Charleston.

I’m currently a member of the ranks of the unemployed in the United States. I had retired from Chesterfield (Va.) Fire & EMS Department, my employer for more than 25 years, to pursue a second career in the private sector managing a small EMS service in southeastern Ohio. I‘d been working with the company‘s owner and his staff for about 18 months as a planning and teaching consultant before accepting his offer to become his chief of operations. After about four months, it became clear to both of us that my public-sector upbringing and their private-sector, family owned ways of doing business weren’t a good fit. And in that environment there‘s really only one person who can go.

Now, I have lots of lines in the water, but no bites yet. I have applications out for a variety of emergency services positions, for which I think my first career has prepared me. But I will say that the Internet sure makes looking and applying for jobs a great deal easier and less costly, especially given the cost of gasoline today. FIRE CHIEF’s Job Zone and the IAFC‘s Candidate Center have become popular places for localities to post their public safety vacancies to attract the best candidates. I‘m also a registered client with Monster and Yahoo Hot Jobs, especially for potential job opportunities outside the fire and EMS service.

Recently I wrote a piece for Writezilla, an Internet writing service, about where people are looking for jobs and how they‘re getting jobs. In a 2007 survey of 15,000 visitors, WEDDLE‘s found that almost 27% of the respondents — the highest percentage — both found their last job and successfully applied for it online. The numbers were almost double what the same survey found in 2006.

One thing I’ve learned in my experiences of trying to find good people to hire — and now my own efforts to find gainful employment — is that if fire and EMS organizations want to address their recruitment needs more adequately they need to get better connected with sites like Monster or Yahoo Hot Jobs and put resources into their own Web site design and maintenance. The sites that provide me with everything I need to make an informed decision about the advertised position, complete an application online, and submit my electronic resume and application are the ones for which I take the time to apply for a position.

How many of your Web sites currently allow an applicant to do that?

This past week, FIRE CHIEF hosted its third Station Style conference in Phoenix. And I’m pleased to say that it was a success.

Phoenix Fire Department Executive Asst. Chief Steve Kreis welcomed the chiefs, officers, commissioners and architects. “Probably some of the most expensive things we do in the fire service, we entrust to you,” he said. “You deal with codes and NFPA standards and those requirements are clearly a challenge.”

The Phoenix Fire Department places a priority on firefighter comfort. “We live where we work and it needs to be a work place and serve that particular purpose,” Kreis said. “Yet it needs to be comfortable to live in also.”

Deputy Chief Ken C. Leake and Project Manager Jim Zwerg followed Kreis with an “Overview of Station Design the Phoenix Way.” Leake stressed the importance of community involvement in the design of a fire station. Station 57, which conference attendees toured on Sunday afternoon, is surrounded by a equestrian trail. “During the design of Station 57, the community wanted a railing in front of the station,” said Leake. Later, when Leake stopped by the new station, he saw a horse tied to the railing while the owner was inside the fire station.

Community rooms in each fire station are available for public use by calling a central scheduling office at Phoenix Fire Department. “We walked in one time and found sewing machines set up in the room,” Leake said. “The local quilting club was using the room.”

Mary McGrath, AIA, Beverly Prior Architects, presented “Operations-Based Design in a Sustainable World,” which focused on the importance of learning to work with your architects. “The most successful station we find is based on the architects‘ understanding of what you do,” she said. And McGrath isn’t the only architect who believe that. Later during a break, I overheard an architect ask a chief if he could ride-along for a shift.

The Station Style Conference was focused specifically on designing and building fire and emergency service facilities. But one program that may have seemed tangential turned out to be the most talked about program of the conference. Deputy Chief Ed Nied of the Tucson (Ariz.) Fire Department and Dr. Kelly A. Reynolds of the University of Arizona College of Public Health reported the results of their research study in “Design Strategies for Preventing Infectious Disease Transmission.”

Reynolds explained that they expected to find MRSA in wet, moist areas like showers and gyms, but found nothing. “But dry areas, bacteria survived for day to longer periods of time,” she said. They strongly recommended no carpeting in fire stations, particularly in sleeping areas, and no cloth recliners or couches in the day rooms. Nied also recommended “safe” areas of the fire station where turnout gear and boots would be prohibited. “If a firefighter kneels down in a victim‘s house and returns to the station, you don‘t know what they could be bringing back to the fire house,” Nied said. They also recommended personnel leave station wear in the station. Changing their clothes before and after work can protect their families from possible exposure.

Furniture manufacturer Bulldogg Tuff Comfort introduced the small, stuffed Bulldogg tuff pupp. Sales raised funds for the National Fallen FireFighters Foundation, and the last of the pups were purchased by Byron Epp, Door Engineering, to meet their goal of $3,000.

Here are a few other tips offered during the 2008 Station Style Conference:

• “Build training into your fire station design,” said Mark Shoemaker, AIA, Cole + Russell Architects. Use mezzanines for rappelling exercises and vertical concrete pipes for confined-space rescues.
  


• “If you talk the talk, then walk the walk and have a fire sprinkler system in your station,”said Alden Spencer, Tyco Fire & Building Products.
  


• “The cost of green or LEED your station can be insignificant,” said Lynn Reda, AIA, LeMay Erickson Willcox Architects.
  


• “It‘s almost always less expensive to go out than up,” said Ken Newell, AIA, Stewart Cooper Newell. “American Disability Acts requires elevators to second floors, and that adds between $125 to $225,000.”
  


• “Make sure the flooring you select is UV-resistant,” said Larry Enyart, FAIA, LEA Architects, during “In Flooring Factors for Stations.”
  

And the chiefs were listening. By Tuesday morning, one chief already had called his department and told them not to put the carpeting in the dorm area.

Further details will be featured in an upcoming FIRE CHIEF.

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security‘s Science and Technology Directorate coordinated a demonstration of voice interoperability between six different manufacturers‘ systems using a new Bridging System Interface.

During the demonstration, gear from Motorola, Scitec, Valcom, Cisco Systems, Clarity Communications Systems and Twisted Pair Solutions were connected via the BSI, and communications were conducted in a scenario format involving state, county and local jurisdictions operating on separate bands.

DHS officials were careful to note that the BSI is not a standard, but a specification that leverages commercial voice-over-IP technology. Equipment that allows disparate radio systems to interoperate via an IP platform is nothing new, but that doesn‘t mean that the various bridging systems easily interoperate with each other, said Dereck Orr, program manager for public safety communications standards for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“Just because it says it‘s IP doesn‘t mean it‘s interoperable,” Orr said. “We needed to get that word out to public safety and to policymakers, as well.”

However, by using IP commonalities, program participants — DHS, vendors and public safety representatives — were able to establish a BSI specification that typically has not been terribly difficult for manufacturers to incorporate in their solutions, said Luke Klein-Berndt, chief technology officer for DHS S&T.

“We were looking for that common technical space and work there,” he said. “We wanted to come up with the best technical solution but also come up with one that didn‘t mean dramatic changes for anyone.”

On the surface, the idea of getting multiple vendors that compete with one another on a daily basis to work together might seem to be a difficult proposition, but DHS officials insist that wasn‘t the case. The logistics coordinating vendor representatives‘ schedules were a challenge, but once they were at the same table, “things really started to flow,” Klein-Berndt said.

DHS deserves a lot of credit in making this happen. It‘s nice to know that IP-based connectivity systems should be able to work together, but it‘s much more valuable to first responders to know that they do work together and to be able to cite a specification in bid documents.

Such interoperability is important because federal officials estimate that as much as $100 billion has been spent on public-safety LMR systems across the country, so that‘s not an investment that can be overhauled overnight. The LMR systems are going to be around for a long time, so technologies like the BSI are valuable in making that happen.

Of course, the BSI is not the only DHS interoperability initiative. The federal department also is spearheading development efforts for multiband radio, radio over wireless broadband, and even an ingenious system that gives helicopter pilots homeland-security surveillance assignments that can be accomplished during their return trips from missions.

By themselves, none of these solutions are the answer to interoperability — there is no single “silver bullet” that will solve the problem. But with each successful DHS project, public-safety communications officials are given another tool that will let them build a solid foundation for interoperability, both now and in the future.