You have backup battery banks, you have generators, you have interoperability plans. Your facilities are hardened and above the flood plain.

In spite of all that, your systems are still brought down by external factors, like failure of public infrastructure (public network phone lines and data circuits), unforeseen physical damage (a building collapse or a 2x4 blown through the radiator of a generator), flooding on an unprecedented scale, or tower failures from wind beyond their design specs.

Complex radio systems are like thoroughbred race horses.....fast, powerful, and beautiful in full stride. But racehorses have fragile legs, and if they step in a hole, they are going to go down hard. Katrina has shown that disasters have a way of littering the race track with holes.

How do you get agencies talking again until repairs can be made and your systems can be brought back on line?

We have studied the Katrina and other disaster failures, and we have come up with a product and a plan to help when it all goes down.

An article in Disaster Resource Guide begins to suggest alternative planning and ideas for pre-contracting backup services. Of course, this article was written prior to the Katrina event, where some of these ideas involving reliance on public network infrastructure would have imploded, but....

Another article, written by Dominic Tusa of Tusa Consulting in New Orleans, details how hardened system designs where everything was planned for can still collapse due to outside circumstances beyond anyone's control; and how top-quality equipment can fall prey to public infrastructure failures. And, it details how bureaucratic snafus and security measures at the local level delayed restoration and repair responses.

How do you plan for another layer of backup without further straining your preparedness budget? What can you do to provide for another layer of communications infrastructure under these conditions?

3rd St. R & D can help you with temporary restoration support, services, and equipment.

In order to do that, we suggest that you do some research and establish off-site records so that you can give us the information we need to support you.

Gather Critical Information

1. Make an up-to-date list of all of your frequencies, PL's, and system formats.

2. Gather the same data for bordering agencies with whom you will need to communicate or interoperate.

3. Define contacts within your agency and bordering agencies for coordinating this response when it is needed. Give them the authority to do what they need to do.

4. Make a list of brands and models of radios used within your systems. Acquire radio programming software for all radios you use, and train someone up to use it that won't mess with it when it IS working. Suggest that bordering agencies do the same.

Plan for the possibility of failure and restoration:

1. If you have a trunked radio system, program some of your system repeater frequencies into your radios to operate as conventional operation channels in a conventional zone or channel list, perhaps in a zone or channel list  which also contains the National Interoperability Channels, but are not the same as those channels. Come to grips with the strong possibility that if it's bad enough,  you may have to totally supplant your systems in the short term.

2. Identify alternative high-ground locations where temporary systems can site when they arrive. This can be as simple as a hilltop with a view.

3. If you do not have high ground, establish a relationship with a crane rental company or a sign company to be able to access their equipment as temporary tower facilities; or establish a rooftop that will be used for temporary placement of restoration systems. Find locations that have sufficient area to support the erection of mobile towers. For example, our portable 115' towers require a 230' diameter area for guying at full height.

4. Establish relationships for generators, fuel supplies, and tankers for surviving backup and incoming temporary generators. Generators themselves may not be enough....plan for a way to distribute the power from a generator to temporary structures, staging areas, and Command Posts. A big generator (200-300KW) may go through 300-500 gallons of fuel every 24 hours. Plan for your fuel to have to come from outside of the probable disaster area....possibly a long way outside of the area.

5. Establish a rapid credentialing procedure and location outside of the damage area and an access list for restoration vendors which is distributed to Local and Regional Law Enforcement so that the people coming to help you can get through check points. (A Big problem at Katrina)

6. Establish contacts and procedures with public infrastructure providers (the phone company) to access points-of-presence outside of the potential disaster area so that temporary circuits via microwave can be established and relayed into your disaster area. Satellite phones and VSAT terminals are great, but they won't pull the load of thousands of users coming up all at once.

7. Establish staging areas with parking for large vehicles outside of the probable disaster area radius where incoming services can stage, set up, and operate.

8. Establish contractual relationships with vendors who can bring in those temporary systems and inventory to bridge you until your systems can be restored.

That's where we come in. 

3rd St. R & D is in the business of rapidly deploying very large temporary communications systems and infrastructure. We do it all the time for special events, some of which are possibly larger in equipment complement or cover larger areas than your municipal systems. For example, we've brought telco and internet connections in from over 100 miles away.

We think outside of the box, and routinely do unusual configurations and go to unusual lengths to deploy those systems.

How a relationship with us could work for your Municipality

If you have a better idea or a preference, we want to hear it, but here is our concept.

You can enter into a restoration agreement with us at little or no cost. If you have done the work on your end, you have gathered the information and made the arrangements above. Or, we can visit your municipality and help you accomplish these tasks. A visit is not free, but it's reasonable. Fresh eyes can be valuable.

If you have a communications system consultant, we're happy to collaborate with them to coordinate efforts. We're there to help them too.

When, or if, you anticipate an incoming event, you can pre-stage us near your municipality for a reasonable, predictable flat rate fee that you can budget into your disaster preparedness. This fee covers our transportation, fuel, and staging costs for equipment and personnel.

If it turns out that you do not need our services, we go home.

If it turns out that you do need us, the meter starts running on an agreed price structure and we go to work. When your systems come back on line, we tear down and go home.

You have never worked with a company like us, or seen anybody move like we do.

We're fast, we're capable, we're all about getting it up and running. We're not about meetings, we're about action. All you have to do is say "GO" and then get out of the way.

Within hours of arrival, we can have basic wide-area comms up and running, radio inventory on the street, and people talking.

The Key is Advance Planning - YOYO72 (You're on your own for at least 72 hours)

We cannot help you if we do not know what you need, and most important, if you do not know what you need. The research and planning is critical to a rapid response and restoration.

Lowest Common Denominator, Widest possible coverage - System vs. Tactical, Trunking vs. Conventional

Interoperability has been discussed to the point of fatigue, so it goes without saying that there are a wide variety of systems and equipment out there. Motorola  trunking, M/ACom trunking, LTR, Passport, and conventional are the most common. There are also a variety of frequency bands in use, VHF, UHF, and 800mhz being the most common.

Using our equipment, we can create interoperable " constructs" between the three most commonly used bands using the analog conventional format at the system or wide area level. We can implement multiple constructs to handle Law, Fire, and EMS simultaneously and independently. We can use your frequencies, or we can file emergency temporary authorizations for additional frequencies. Each band within a construct has the range and coverage of a repeater system, since they are all repeaters on high ground. Variable audio levels do not effect keying reliability since each construct uses carrier and PL cross-keying just like normal repeaters. Each construct can be interfaced to a normal communications console that can generate TRC (Tone Remote Control) commands. If your dispatch center is down, we can provide physical consoles and computer-based virtual consoles.

Why conventional? Because although the high-level formats are incompatible with each other, almost all modern radio equipment has conventional analog capability for backwards compatibility. Even if neighboring jurisdictions have incompatible trunking systems, conventional can tie them all together. And if the systems are down, format is a moot point. Ya gotta get talking.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Each region or municipality is different, each incident is different. We do not propose a universal solution, but rather through advance planning, a solution that is designed and configured for your situation that you can be prepared to work with, and that is prepared to work with you.

Maybe you do not need a multi-band solution, maybe you just need a single band solution. Whatever it is, we can help.

Issues with Tactical Interop Bridges

Interop bridges are good things, but.....

Most tactical bridges operate with a form of VOX (voice operated transmit), and varying audio levels between dissimilar radios can cause their operation to be erratic. Call set-up times when bridging different system protocols can be, and often are, problematic. This is especially true when bridging trunking formats to conventional systems.

Tactical Interop bridges are handy little devices at the tactical level when there are working systems to tie together, or when using simplex. But bridges are at the mercy of the range of the radios they interconnect and their technical protocols. With wide-area systems non-operational, the most a bridge can give you is a mile or two of normal simplex range, if you have your bridging radios programmed for simplex.

Interop bridges are of significant utility tactically and we recommend their use on the simplex national interoperability frequencies, where there are significant multi-discipline operations in a small area.

The effective use of Tactical Bridges is dependent purely on the skill of the bridge operator and how completely he or she understands how the bridge works and how the systems being bridged work, both technically and within the operational requirements of the incident.

Even after the initial incident has passed, and even after your systems are restored, it is likely that there will be an ongoing need for communications in the remediation and recovery efforts to follow. It is also likely that these communications will tax radio resources that need to be redirected to everyday operations.

Our systems can remain a separate and distinct set of communications pathways to handle the remediation phase, accessible to your public safety organizations, but isolated from their everyday operations.

Being Firefighters, from our view the technical and hardware reality of managing communications at a disaster is not that much different from managing communications at a large special event. The two things have much in common.

It is our business to bring communications unity and coordination to chaos. We do it all the time.

We fit easily into the Logistics branch as a resource to the Command Structure

Our standard deployable configuration is six UHF repeater channels and ten UHF simplex channels. That's plenty to stand up a pretty capable ICS framework which will not tax or load existing systems. As previously mentioned, to that standard configuration we can add multiband bridging to bring VHF and 800mhz radios into the system, OR we can supplement the standard UHF system with additional multiband channels. An example would be six UHF repeaters and three multiband repeaters.

These can be business-band channels on an STA (Special Temporary Authority) operating under Part 90.407 , or we can integrate UTAC and 8TAC national interoperability channels, or both. We can have an emergency STA filed before we leave our Missouri location, and it will be active by the time we get there. Our UHF radio inventory can come in with the UTAC interoperability channels already programmed in addition to Part 90 channels.

The possibilities are endless and flexible.

This flexibility can prevent permanent system restoration and testing from interfering with emergency operations, and vice versa.

If we can be of service to your community, email us or give us a call at 417-336-4045

"Intertalkability is easy....it's just hardware.

Interoperability is much harder....it requires a collaborative attitude.

One without the other is just a chaotic turf war with really good signal-to-noise ratio."

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"Too Often, NIMS means, "Not In MY System"

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"This [A Tactical Interop Bridge] is the most dangerous piece of equipment ever invented.  You connect everybody together, everybody can talk. And nobody can hear."
National Guard Radio Operator in an Interview

Interoperability's Evil Twin - "Get the Hell off of my channel"

Capabilities

* Voting Receivers and remote sites

* Voting Repeaters

* Dispatch and Sub-Dispatch

* Linked and Cross-voted Systems in widely separated locations

* Cross-band linking

* Self Contained Infrastructure via microwave

* Repeater truck and deployable sites

* Synthesized repeaters and voting equipment can rapidly adapt to local conditions