RE: Communications Interoperability in a Disaster

DAB — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 22:24:30 GMT

Thanks for pointing out one more Government Boon Doggle. I agree that public safety is important, but as you point out, this is another gold plated solution that is unproven to work during emergency situations.

Having survived a few "emergencies" I have observed that a handful of volunteers using CB radios are a whole lot more effective than a lot of these fancy radio systems. Yes I know that the CB is not a secure radio, but in an emergency, the speed at which the information can be transferred is much more important than who else knows it.

When you look at most of these systems, the big problem is where they are installed. As they found in New York, when your emergency management office is the site of the emergency, you are left without an adequate response capability.

To deal effectively with emergencies, you need a solid but simple process with a minimum of procedures and a staff trained to implement the process instantly. All of the technical toys do not accomplish this need.

I have seen many of these expensive and fancy solutions to simple problems. They all fail because the users are lured into a false sense of security because of the technical capabilities of their devices. They forget that if the people are not fully trained to exploit those capabilities, then you still end up with chaos.

In my experience, you want to go simple early and often. Knowing what to do is a whole lot more important than having a device that is too complicated to use when people are stunned or overly excited. If you have trained people throughout the area who can organize the many volunteers who emerge from the survivors, you can do a much better job than trying to play mother may I with distant and clueless managers.

Just my observation.

DAB