Nearly six years after the 9/11 attacks demonstrated the difficulties of emergency personnel trying to talk to one another, Maryland is still struggling to improve communications among first responders.
“Interoperable communications has to be number 1” in priorities for homeland security, Gov. Martin O’Malley told hundreds of county officials Friday. The day before he held a closed-door meeting with local homeland securityofficers from around the state where he emphasized a list of 12 priorities.
The officials are in this resort town for the annual convention of the Maryland Association of Counties.
Making sure all first responders can talk to each other on radio frequencies was at the top of the list.
“A big incident will require a lot of different departments to be able to work together and respond to the emergency,” O?Malley said. Six years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, “we should have already had that in place by now.”
The Baltimore region is not as big a problem when it comes to communications, State Police Superintendent Terrence Sheridan said. Carroll County recently became the last of the region?s jurisdictions to getthe 800 megahertz radio system, he said.
The biggest communications problem for first responders in Maryland is Prince George?s County. It will not have its 800-megahertz radio system in place until two years from now, County Executive Jack Johnson said.
“That will close the regional communications gap,” he said.
But it was made possible only with the help of area congressmen. The system was originally to have cost $30 million, but when finally in place, it will have cost $80 million.
U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-2nd, said, “Homeland Security has not done the job.”
The department was flawed from the start, he said, and it “has not prioritized the way it should have. After six years, we have still not gotten the resources we need.”
But Maryland is in much better shape when it comes to communications in medical emergency, said Dr. Robert Bass, head of Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems. He said it was “one of the few statewide medical systems in the country.”
