Out of reach: inter-agency communications systems remain uncoordinated.

• Author: Walsh, David C.
• Position: Emergency communications system

THE SCALE OF HURRICANE Katrina made history, but the Failures it revealed in the government's communications capabilities were not surprising. At all levels of the U.S. infrastructure, crisis planners and first responders operate a bewildering combination of old and new technology that is oftenincompatible with that of other local and regional jurisdictions--and with federal entities.

Replacing old analog systems with interoperable transmission equipment, special gear and redundant systems is an expensive, operationally complex proposition.

The 9/11 commission report completed last year insisted that seamless emergency communications were needed in future crises to replace the current patchwork. The events of September 11, 2001, had exposed shortcomings with lethal consequences for police and firefighters using incompatible gear.

Yet after Katrina, as in 9/11, police could not talk to firefighters and emergency medical teams. Helicopter and boat rescuers had to wave signs and follow one another to survivors. Sometimes, police and other first responders were out of touch with comrades a few blocks away. National Guard relay runners scurried about with scribbled messages as they did during the Civil War.

Blistering post mortems about federal and local communications failures continue. The reaction of former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, a member of the 9/11 Commission and a participant in a Katrina study, is typical. He called congressional laxness on interoperability "a national scandal."

The numbers of government and military communications systems and networks have grown exponentially since 9/11. Discrete transmissions of voice and data can now move via encrypted landline, satellite, radio, broad- and narrow- band and cellular routes. In normal times, these stand-alones work as intended.

But they cannot interoperate, and too often they fail during what disaster planners call "events of national consequence."

Vulnerable, populated metropolitan areas continue to be at the mercy of those flaws. San Francisco, for example, abuts an earthquake fault zone and is home to known terrorist targets such as the Golden Gate Bridge. Yet Chief Gary Gee, head of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police, knows the city's 200 officers lack proper communications devices, he told National Defense.

"Our radios cannot talk to all first-responder law enforcement, fire service, and [emergency service] agencies in the four Bay Area counties that BART serves," he...