PORT ANGELES — First responders’ radio woes at ground zero on 9/11 have yielded communications solutions on the North Olympic Peninsula, five years later and 2,500 miles away.
Police officers and firefighters at the Twin Towers discovered that they couldn’t talk to each another during the New York City chaos because they used different radio frequencies.
Emergency personnel in Jefferson and Clallam Counties have suffered from similar vexations — complicated by trying to communicate across the Olympic Mountains that often block even compatible signals.
But out of 9/11 came myriad programs to improve emergency responses, among them the Olympic Public Safety Communications Alliance Network — OPSCAN — that will go “live” early next month.
“The system is ready now,” said Patti Morris, administrator of the $5.8 million OPSCAN grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “but we want to make sure that the users are well trained.”
People who call 9-1-1 in an emergency won’t notice the difference, but dispatchers will.
A recent test of the system, linking a Jefferson County communications center in Port Hadlock with a deputy in the county’s West End, “was clear as a bell,” Morris said last week.
Similar radio messages using previous technology got through only about 30 percent of the time.
No more ‘dead spots
Emergency personnel along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Hood Canal and the Pacific coast long have endured such blackouts in the shadows of the Olympics and the valleys that radiate from the mountains.
OPSCAN will end those frustrations with cross-band repeaters, voice-over-Internet microwave transmissions, and fiber optics.
The system will enable emergency personnel in Port Hadlock, for instance, to talk to their counterparts at Cape Flattery, 90 miles distant.
“It’s basically our own Internet network, a private network,” Morris said.
The network was born at a Nov. 15, 2001, meeting of members of Peninsula Communications, better known as PenCom.
It handles 9-1-1 calls in Clallam and Jefferson counties and Olympic National Park.
Not until September 2003, however, did OPSCAN receive the federal grant that would make it a reality.
Total cost of the project is estimated at $7.25 million, with the partners providing a 25 percent match.
Maryland-based ARINC, Inc., provided the voice-over-Internet radio network that Clallam County Sheriff Joe Martin called “the heart of the system.”
It cost nearly $1.8 million.
Model for the nation
Martin said OPSCAN is the largest single project in which the county has participated.
Today, Homeland Security is hailing OPSCAN as a model for the nation, and ARINC says it is the best system in rural America.
OPSCAN’s 42 member agencies include the Olympic National Park, Washington State Patrol, Clallam Transit System, state Department of Transportation, Olympic Medical Center, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Jefferson County Sheriff is expected to join the network soon.
The Coast Guard will share its facilities on Ediz Hook, Neah Bay, Pearson Creek, Ellis Lookout, Bahokus Peak and Maynard Peak with OPSCAN.