When the jetliner crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, emergency responders weren’t sure where they’d find enough radios so that the hundreds of rescuers could talk to each other.
That’s no longer a worry, said Bob Griffin, director of emergency management for Arlington County. The Washington Metropolitan Region has a cache of 1,250 radios, and public safety agencies throughout the area have upgraded their radio systems so that fire officials in Loudoun County can flip a switch and speak with rescuers in the District of Columbia or Montgomery County.
“We’re using the system every single day,” Griffin said. “It’s just part of what we do, so that if a disaster strikes, we’re not asking, ‘What does this button do?’”
The D.C. region was one of six out of 75 U.S. cities that earned top grades for its emergency agencies’ ability to communicate during a disaster, according to a report released Wednesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Five years after the terrorist attacks, Chertoff vowed to make sure the remaining metropolitan areas have advanced disaster communications systems by 2009.
The report rated the D.C. region as being advanced in the three areas it studied: governance and planning; standardizing procedures; and usage of the shared systems.
The National Capital Region has 25 separate communications systems that can all be connected through an 800 MHz radio system. Prince George’s County the only public safety system that cannot connect to the 800 MHz system, according to the report.
The Washington-Metropolitan region had already been upgrading its communication ability when the attacks occurred five years ago, Griffin said. Since then, the area has spent tens of millions of dollars improving its ability to communicate among agencies, including more than $34 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
