Failure to communicate: Radio woes vex fire crews
2 fire radio systems in the Valley often can’t talk to each other, which puts lives at risk, officials say. A fix won’t be cheap.
The ugly pillar of ink-black smoke was all the alarm Mesa Fire Capt. Randy Budd needed.
Beneath the plume, an apartment complex was blazing. Budd rolled Engine 218 to the scene at 39 N. San Jose St., where despite the flames and smoke, there was no question what to do.
Someone could be trapped. The firefighters were going in.
In the inferno, Budd had several jobs. He had to fight the fire. He had to look for and rescue any victims. He had to keep his fellow firefighters safe.
And, using his radio, he had to keep fire officials outside the building informed on all the above.
The problem was, his radios didn’t work.
“I’m having communication problems right from the beginning,” Budd recalled. “I’m hearing the battalion chief, but he can’t hear me.”
Budd borrowed a crewmate’s radio. It didn’t work either.
“Now I have a radio in each hand,” Budd said. “I’m trying to fight the fire and look for any victims. I can’t talk to him (the battalion chief), and he’s getting antsy” because he hasn’t heard from any firefighters inside the building.
“I grab another radio. The third radio doesn’t work.
“I got out on the edge of the building and wave my hands to the battalion safety officer” to let him know the firefighters were OK, Budd said.
“Flames and smoke blowing out my backside. I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing” — namely, fighting fire.
No one was hurt in the April 2008 blaze.
But to Budd, a 19-year Mesa fire veteran, it was one of the scariest experiences of his career, all because of what he and other Valley firefighters see as systemic problems with the radios on which they sometimes depend for their lives.
Sensitive issue
Radio communication is a sensitive issue for firefighters, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in which 343 New York City firefighters died, some in part because of their inability to send and receive radio transmissions.
Here in the Valley, the problems extend beyond radios that sometimes fail in fire “hot zones.” The deeper issue is two competing Valley radio systems that are frequently at odds, even when firefighters from different agencies using them happen to be on the same scene together.
Valley firefighters have threatened legal action, and politicians say taxpayers could be on the hook for millions of dollars to rectify the problems.
The fact that firefighters across the Valley rely on two different radio systems that often can’t communicate with each other is the result of a rift involving intercity politics — a rift that numerous officials acknowledge and are trying to heal.
In the meantime, each radio system has its own governing body, and each operates differently in “hot zones” where a firefighter’s life may depend on having a reliable radio.
The issue arises because fire departments assist each other across the Valley, in effect operating as one giant department for which city boundaries don’t exist.
During that fire in April 2008, for example, more than 100 firefighters came, not only from Mesa but also from Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler and Gilbert.
You might think they’d all be on the same wavelength in a situation like that, but you’d be wrong. Mesa and Gilbert have one protocol, and the other three departments, which belong to a radio cooperative led by Phoenix, have another.
“We’ve had problems,” Budd said. “I’m surprised we haven’t killed or lost somebody yet.”
Angry firefighter
Progress toward solving the radio issues has not been nearly fast enough, said Bryan Jeffries, president of the United Mesa Firefighters Association and a former member of the Phoenix City Council.
At a recent Mesa City Council public-safety committee meeting, Jeffries accused officials of dragging their feet in seeking solutions and, in Mesa’s case, of ignoring firefighters in favor of the technicians who actually assemble the complex radio systems.
“All we want is a safe program even if it’s strings and tin cans,” Jeffries said. “But it’s got to be the same.”
Jeffries and the unions representing most Valley firefighters sent a recent letter demanding quick action to sync the radio systems and threatening lawsuits if radio problems cause a firefighter to be hurt or killed.
The most visible manifestation of the issue is the fact that for years, Mesa firefighters have had to carry two radios into hot zones — one so they could talk through Mesa’s system, and one tied to Phoenix’s. Each hand-held radio, Jeffries said, costs about $5,000.
Mesa firetrucks also have to be equipped with two radios, with a toggle switch allowing firefighters to move from one system to the other.
But not all trucks carry the same radios, Jeffries said, so firefighters have to be adept at handling several kinds of units.
Mesa hopes to eliminate that aspect of the problem by buying hand-held and truck-mounted radios that can talk to both systems. The City Council recently agreed to spend nearly $133,000 for 17 hand-held and two truckmounted units, all made by Motorola.
That is just a fraction of the millions that have been spent over the years on radios, computers, transmission towers and other emergency communications equipment across the Valley.
And it does not alter the underlying reality that two publicsafety radio networks operate in what is really one vast city.
Of the two, Phoenix’s is by far the larger.
Called the Regional Wireless Cooperative, it encompasses 19 municipal jurisdictions from New River to Sun Lakes and from the far West Valley to Chandler. Its radio coverage area spans 11,000 square miles.
The network led by Mesa, called the Topaz Regional Wireless Cooperative, includes Gilbert, Queen Creek, Apache Junction, the Apache Junction Fire District and the tiny community of Rio Verde.
Vision of unity
It wasn’t meant to be that way. The original idea was to have a completely compatible system, and the current situation evolved from a long chain of events beginning in the1970s.
It was then, according to Phoenix division Fire Chief Doug Mummert, that Phoenix, Glendale and Tempe decided, in effect, to merge their fire operations.
“Even though we’ll still have our autonomy, we’ll train together, we’ll use the same procedures, we’ll use the same equipment, we’ll use the same radio system,” Mummert said.
The idea was to deliver emergency aid as quickly as possible regardless of city boundaries. Phoenix’s system added nearly a score of other departments over time, and calls for all are dispatched from Phoenix fire headquarters.
Mesa had its own dispatch center, and although it never merged radio operations with Phoenix, it and other East Valley departments did become part of the region-wide automatic-aid network.
That means units from the Phoenix and Mesa groups routinely cross city lines into each other’s territory so that the closest units are dispatched, regardless of city boundaries.
Harry Beck, who straddles both worlds as a former deputy Phoenix fire chief and Mesa’s current fire chief, said both entities saw the need to develop new radio systems about15 to 20 years ago, partly because of changing federal rules regarding frequencies and other issues, and partly because of “planned obsolescence” by the companies that make the expensive equipment.
“It was designed as one system, but it was designed to be run and managed by the two separate entities at that time,” Beck said. “The vision was that when we built these two things they’ll be totally compatible. We’ll be able to use them throughout the Valley.”
Huge price tags
The radio systems are complex and expensive.
They must allow communications among individual firefighters, from the firefighters to an incident command center, from the command center to dispatch, and from dispatch to hundreds of individual units around the Valley on numerous radio channels.
At midafternoon on a recent Friday, the Phoenix dispatch center was simultaneously handling more than 40 calls from Chandler to the northwest Valley, all of them routed through wall after wall of computer servers hidden in the bowels of fire headquarters.
Mummert said Phoenix bought its radio system for $120 million in 2000, making sure it met the latest industry and government specifications.
But by then, he said, the Phoenix Fire Department had started “hearing reports of firefighters having difficulties in buildings like we have,” referring to high rises, buildings with subterranean floors and parking garages, and malls with lots of concrete walls. “We started hearing about firefighters that were being injured and killed in these buildings. And whether or not it was caused by communications, in the reports communications was a factor.”
These were the same kinds of scenarios that were identified in the aftermath of the 9/11 World Trade Center deaths.
Mummert said the Phoenix department made exhaustive tests in every conceivable kind of building and working environment.
Those tests revealed that for firefighters in hot zones, the best radio system is called analog simplex.
With analog, as opposed to digital, it’s still possible to get some information with even a weak signal. When digital signals weaken, they die with little or no warning.
“Simplex” means that the radios are operating basically as walkie-talkies so that one firefighter can talk to another in dangerous areas.
“If you’re the firefighter and you’re dying, you don’t want ... a bonk,” Mummert said, referring to the problem that arises when a digital system is overloaded and a firefighter can’t speak into it. “You want to be able to get your message in there.”
The digital divide
Of the hundreds of acronyms in the world of emergency communications, the one of most concern to firefighters is IDLH — “immediately dangerous to life and health.”
“When we go into an IDLH atmosphere and we’re wearing those masks and we’re breathing self-contained air, that is when we require people to be on that analog simplex system,” Mummert said.
That comports with the recommendation of a 2008 report from the U.S. Fire Administration, part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Departments operating on digital systems, that report said, “should evaluate adding conventional direct-mode channels for fireground use” because they are more reliable than digital.
Mesa uses an entirely digital system, which officials at the time felt would work well because the city doesn’t have the same kinds of building and terrain issues that Phoenix has.
Mesa City Manager Chris Brady said the city has since tried to overcome digital-radio problems by outfitting large buildings with “repeaters” that relay the radio signals.
That has been done, he said, with Mesa’s eight-story government office tower and the arts center just across the street in the heart of downtown.
But that doesn’t fix the problem of digital radios themselves not always being reliable, Budd said.
“As soon as they get a little damp or a little moisture on them, it’s not uncommon for me to go through a radio or two on a fire,” he said. And unless a digital signal can hit a repeater or a tower, it often can’t make it out of a hot zone to the receiver of a fire commander or dispatcher.
Phoenix switches to analog when it rolls into a hot zone, which is about 20 percent of its calls. That applies even when units in the Phoenix network cross into the area controlled by Mesa.
“When we send a Phoenix firefighter over to Mesa to fight a fire, we do not allow them to go onto the Mesa channels,” Mummert said. “We do business through what is called a patch in the dispatch center.
“The other thing we do, every time we send units over to Mesa for a structure fire, we send an extra chief from Phoenix, one of our battalion chiefs,” Mummert said. “Their whole job is to monitor communications and make sure our people are safe while they’re operating over there.”
The other 80 percent of the calls dispatched by Phoenix fire involve medical emergencies and other non-fire situations. For those calls, the Mesa and Phoenix systems operate identically.
Budd thinks that number should be 100 percent.
“We should all be playing the same and practicing the same in the whole Valley, and we shouldn’t be doing things differently in Mesa than we do in our surrounding cities,” he said. “If we can do something in a safer fashion, why wouldn’t we do it that way?”
‘Bitter divorce’
Although Phoenix and Mesa had been working toward one seamless radio system, they split in September 2007.
Alton Washington, then the assistant city manager in Phoenix, sent Mesa a letter that month saying that “Phoenix is moving forward with establishing a regional governance system without the city of Mesa.”
His letter cited “an unfortunate impasse on core issues with respect to establishing a regional governing organization for the radio network.”
In a response from then-Deputy City Manager Debra Dollar, Mesa suggested that Phoenix was seeking too much control over regional radio assets.
Dollar left the city several years ago and could not be reached for comment. But many of those interviewed said that in essence the issue came down to a battle of egos and control.
“Mesa has invested $27 million in infrastructure and $11 million in hardware and as a founding member, Mesa must have additional protections built into the contract agreement,” Dollar wrote, seeking to maintain control over the city’s investment.
In that letter, she said Mesa would form its own network, but promised to keep its system compatible with Phoenix’s. Mesa and its partners formed Topaz in 2008.
Apart from the nuts-andbolts questions over assets and control, several officials said the split also had much to do with wounded egos on one side of the table or both.
Mesa Vice Mayor Alex Finter calls the situation “a bitter divorce.”
“Now we have this challenge that we need to fix,” said Finter, a retired Mesa fire captain. “It may include marrying back up with the Phoenix system, it may not. But what is the price tag to the taxpayer? ... It could run into the millions of dollars.”
Lawsuit threatened
Although nobody interviewed could point to a case where radio problems caused a firefighter to die or get hurt in the Valley, it has happened elsewhere.
Radio failure led to the deaths of firefighters Robin Broxterman and Brian Schira in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2008.
An investigation revealed that Broxterman, a 37-year-old mother of two, and Schira, 31, were trapped in a burning home and tried for seven minutes to summon help via their Motorola digital radios.
Commanders never heard them; their bodies were found in the basement amid the rubble of a collapsed floor.
Fear of a similar incident in the Valley permeates a March 12 letter from attorney Michael J. Petitti Jr. to members of the Topaz board.
The firm represents firefighters from 10 cities, including Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Tempe, Chandler, Gilbert and four smaller departments. Those are the departments most likely to be crossing the line between the two radio systems.
The letter blames Topaz for its “refusal to work with Regional Wireless Cooperative to implement a Valleywide emergency radio system.” That refusal, the letter says, “puts firefighters and citizens at great risk of personal harm, as well as poses a substantial risk to taxpayers’ property.”
The firefighters asked Topaz directors to “immediately take all necessary action to remedy the problems with Topaz’s emergency radio communication system discussed in this letter.”
It concludes: “Our clients will take all legal and equitable actions to hold Topaz accountable should any of their members suffer injury or death as a result of Topaz’s unacceptable emergency radio decisions.”
John Kross, the town manager for Queen Creek and chairman of the Topaz board, said the legal nature of the letter precluded him from responding in detail until the board has a chance to evaluate it.
But he said, “We don’t believe the technology in place is necessarily a system that in and of itself creates a safety situation for our first responders.”
In terms of meshing the radio systems, Kross said, “There’s options out there. ... We remain nimble and amenable to those types of solutions. If there is a problem or a perception of a problem out there that we’re not aware of, we remain open to solutions.”
Signs of reconciliation
Jeffries likens the situation to two neighboring cities deciding to build light-rail systems that don’t connect.
“We are now in different cars and we are driving different directions,” he said.
Those on the two governing bodies, however, are not quite
as dire in their assessments.
Alex Deshuk, Mesa’s manager of technology and innovation, sits on the Topaz board and told City Council members in February that “we’re working together as a region better than we ever have been.”
Others, including Beck, Brady and Assistant Phoenix City Manager Ed Zuercher, echoed Deshuk’s optimism.
The outlines and costs of an ultimate solution are hazy, however.
Felix, the RWC executive director, said he was asked when he was interviewed for the job three years ago, “How are you going to put this RWC-TRWC Humpty Dumpty back together again?”
“I said I don’t know,” Felix said. “It sounded like a bad divorce,” and some time might be needed for hurt feelings to heal.
It helps, he said, that most of the
Felix said the fire-radio issue is but one small part of a vast landscape wherein public-safety agencies and other emergency responders still have a hard time communicating.
Arizona’s radio infrastructure desperately needs upgrading, Felix said, but the Legislature has not committed the necessary funds.
“A collapse could cause serious problems,” he said. “It’s not a real sexy topic until something happens.”
Dennis Kavanaugh, who chairs the Mesa City Council’s publicsafety committee, has vowed to bird-dog the fire-radio problems for as long as it takes to build a seamless system.
Kavanaugh has worked at the