Emergency radio system? Roger that

It’s about time — because you can’t co-ordinate if you can’t communicate, and in a large-scale emergency, co-ordination of resources is crucial.

Think about it: fire departments operate their own radio frequencies — police departments have their own systems, too, and often, there’s no system that lets different fire departments talk to each other directly, or talk to police services. Instead, the different organizations have to call individual dispatchers and have the dispatchers relay messages.

It’s cumbersome, slow and has the potential to generate life-threatening errors.

The solution? A central radio system that allows everyone involved in an emergency response — police, fire fighters, paramedics — to communicate directly with each other.

It doesn’t sound like rocket science, and it also doesn’t sound like something that emergency responders should still be waiting for in 2019.

But, in this province, that’s where we are.

This week, the province finally announced a change to that.

The provincial government’s statement was short on detail — at this point, they’re just putting out a call, “seeking qualifications from businesses interested in designing, building, operating, and maintaining a single, province-wide public safety radio system to be used by government and first responders.”

The next step in the process will be a request for proposals, and after that, sometime down the road, actual construction of the assets and equipment needed to connect emergency services to each other.

Even in the government’s news release, the quotes attributed to cabinet ministers acknowledge it’s been needed for a long time. Here’s Justice Minister Andrew Parsons: “Radio systems are essential tools for police, paramedics and fire departments to perform their jobs effectively to protect the people of the province. This project is long overdue, and I’m excited to finally see it move forward.” Not as excited as first responders are, we’re guessing. Alberta’s $438-million system has been online since 2016 and was eight years in the making. It played a pivotal role in helping to co-ordinate 32 municipal and corporate fire departments in action at the Fort Mcmurray wildfire disaster.

Saskatchewan’s province-wide system has been in place for over a decade.

Prince Edward Island has had a dedicated island-wide radio network for decades, and upgraded that system in 2015. Nova Scotia’s trunked system has also operated for more than a decade.

And even before provinces started building overarching emergency systems, many provinces, Nova Scotia among them, had dedicated “mutual aid” radio frequencies that allowed different fire and police departments to communicate with each other directly, a system that dates back decades.

So, yes, it’s a good idea. But like other good ideas in the emergency services (Enhanced 911, for example) this province has been shown to be regularly late to the party, usually because of the hefty costs involved.

Let’s hope the plan to let emergency services workers talk to each other during emergencies doesn’t run into any further logjams.