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Dan Kegley/Smyth County will receive a $1 million federal grant for a new emergency services communications system that will overcome current barriers to radio contact among agencies. Officials see those challenges daily but most acutely in massive responses like the one after this 2000 school bus wreck.

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Smyth receives $1 million to improve emergency communications

By DAN KEGLEY/Staff

Whoever thought talk is cheap didn’t say that over a radio.
Cost has been one of the considerations in talks for years about an upgrade to Smyth County emergency responders’ communications systems. What’s needed in this age of agency interoperability – the flow of data and voice information between groups of responders—is a unified system that lets anyone talk with anyone else providing first-responder services in the county.
Obstacle-free communications came to the fore of national public attention in New York during the responses to the events of 9/11. Fire fighters could not communicate with police departments. However, SAFECOM, the communications program of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Interoperability and Compatibility, points to events as early as two decades before, including the crash of Air Florida flight 90 in Washington, D.C., where “stovepipe” systems hindered emergency communications.
Thirteen years later, response to the Alfred P. Murrah building bombing in Oklahoma City overwhelmend communications systems there, SAFECOM said.
Closer to home, local responders faced communications snags in 1997 when multiple agencies battled a hazardous industrial fire in Mount Carmel but often couldn’t talk with each other over their radios. In 2000, at least 13 agencies from across the region responded to a school bus wreck south of Chilhowie.
Two years ago, a different communications problem, transmitting and receiving signals across Smyth County’s rolling terrain, gained attention during the hunt for Troy Goad in the mountains along the Smyth/Grayson county border. The sheriff’s department ran an antenna up a church steeple that improved radio signal connections.
Now, Smyth County’s communications incompatabilities and hindrance by terrain are closer to being resolved. The Department of Homeland Security is providing a federal grant in the amount of $1 million which will be used to implement new emergency communications capabilities throughout Smyth County.
Congressman Rick Boucher, D-9th, announced the grant. “This provision of federal funding will enable Smyth County to replace the aging communications infrastructure used by the County’s fire departments, rescue squads and police and sheriff’s departments and expand areas of the county where wireless communications are available for these departments,” Boucher said.
Last year the county and Atkins’ first responders jointly applied for the grant, 911 Coordinator Shannon Williams said Thursday. The new system will cost a total of $3.06 million. “This will be a complete overhaul of communications,” Williams said.
Williams said the system will still rely on VHF band frequencies that “work better in our terrain.”
The grant application addressed both interoperability and terrain challenges to Smyth’s emergency communications: “The current radio configuration for Smyth County is made up of eleven separate radio channels. Some of these channels serve one agency, while others serve up to nine. This layout may permit one agency to speak with one other, but not a free-flow of information between all stakeholders.
“In addition to the financial impact on the region, this project also has significant geographic challenges,” the application said. “These topographical features, with elevations varying from 5,729 feet at Mount Rogers to 1,740 feet in the town of Saltville, have limited the county to a 65% coverage area in radio communications for EMS/Fire and Law Enforcement personnel across the region. This coverage, although unacceptable with regards to safety for residents, tourists, and travelers along the Interstate 81 corridor has been the best the region could afford.”
In addition to cost, Federal Communications Commission rules made more difficult the assignment of new frequencies to the county for a new system, adding to delays.
“Our frequencies today did not meet those rules,” Williams said. “We had to get different frequencies, and we kept bits and pieces” of currently assigned frequencies.
While enhancing the day to day work of emergency responders, the new system will bring Smyth into compliance with SAFECOM’s 2015 vision that “agencies and their representatives at the local, regional, state, and federal levels will be able to communicate using compatible systems, in real time, across disciplines and jurisdictions, to respond more effectively during day-to-day operations and major emergency situations.”
According to the grant application, Smyth County will buy 40 vehicle radios, 205 portables, and 160 pagers, a new communications tower located near the Smyth-Tazewell County line, and other associated equipment, creating streamlined communications.
Now, above Hungry Mother State Park on Walker Mountain at an installation shared by television, radio and emergency services that have antennas, engineers find it ever more difficult to filter out civilian signals bleeding over to frequencies used by emergency responders. Police officers and firefighters don’t want to talk over virtual party lines.
A new system will clear the air.
“Should this grant application be approved,” the application said, “the listed agencies within this multi-jurisdictional area will be able to directly communicate with each other without dispatch intervention. Antiquated equipment will be replaced; a patchwork of incompatible communication networks will be combined to provide increased coverage and improved first responder safety. Primary and backup communications systems that can operate independently from one another will be established. Multiple vendors with competing but incompatible systems will be eliminated with a single provider maintaining the entire system to ensure its sustainability into the future.
“Communication will be clear, efficient, and because of this, lives will be saved.”
According to the grant application, about two dozen agencies will benefit from a new communications system. They include “four Volunteer Rescue Squads (Marion, Chilhowie, Sugar Grove, and Saltville). The Smyth County Ambulance Service is one of two private ambulance services that serve the region and will benefit from this grant. Additionally, this grant opportunity provides communication coverage into our neighboring county, specifically for the Tannersville Fire and EMS as well as two other agencies that serve the citizens of Smyth County which are located beyond the county.
“Mt. Rogers Fire & Rescue located in Washington County serves the citizens located in the Southwest portion of the county and Rural Retreat Fire & EMS located in Wythe County serves citizens on the eastern section of the region. Both of these agencies are dispatched from there respected jurisdictions but rely on mutual aid channels from various agencies to communicate within Smyth County.”