By Dave Buchanan, FirstNet Director of Consultation
Earlier this year, members of the FirstNet User Advocacy team attended Connecticut’s initial state consultation meeting held at the University of Hartford’s Gengras Student Union. Michael Varney, the state’s Single Point of Contact (SPOC) and Statewide Interoperability Coordinator (SWIC), welcomed the more than 40 people in attendance and introduced William Shea, the Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP). Mr. Shea talked briefly about FirstNet’s potential to be a valuable asset to the state and the Nation, adding that the program will be a multi-year effort with which the state must remain engaged.
Mr. Varney then talked about the status of Connecticut’s current and planned FirstNet activities. Connecticut has established a robust governance structure and has been conducting data collection and outreach for a few months now, including encouraging participation in the data collection website that they developed. Mr. Varney also discussed the state’s Nutmeg Network, which is a statewide fiber optic infrastructure that improves and expands access to high-speed networking across the state. He discussed how this could be a valuable resource as the state plan is developed for the deployment of the National Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN).
Representatives from around the state presented use cases that highlighted a few of the unique characteristics of first response in Connecticut. Scott Appleby and Tarrin Jones from the City of Bridgeport’s Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security talked about the derailment of an electric commuter train on the city’s border with Fairfield, Connecticut, in May of 2013. The derailment caused a massive response and disrupted traffic along the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington, DC. Communications networks, including satellites, were saturated by the number of first responders, media outlets, passengers, and passersby trying to call and send data at the same time. Numerous state and local agencies responded to the scene and set up multiple command posts, which would have benefited from a unified emergency broadband system.
Scott Szalkiewicz and Alan Boudreau from the Connecticut Department of Health then discussed the state’s Points of Distribution System that it maintains in the event of a major crisis requiring the widespread dissemination of medication from the Strategic National Stockpile. The system involves thousands of personnel at the federal, state, local, and tribal level and numerous secured facilities across the state. Mr. Szalkiewicz said a single system for coordinating and maintaining the network would be of great value to public health responders, who are an important part of response operations.
Scott Wright from the DESPP and Wayne Gronlund with Connecticut Incident Management Team 4 gave the final use case presentation, which profiled two annual events in urban and rural settings that present similar issues. Sailfest is a three-day event held in the coastal town of New London, which attracts more than 300,000 patrons and causes heavy land and marine traffic there and across the Connecticut River in Groton, home to a nuclear submarine base. Numerous federal, state, and local agencies are involved in the public safety presence, and commercial networks are quickly bogged down by the increased traffic. The second event, the agricultural-based Durham Fair, brings more than 250,000 people to the town of 7,500 people for four days a year, and this quickly puts stress on the deployable Cell on Wheels (COW) brought in for the event. He said the NPSBN would help public safety have reliable access to data, despite the high demand from attendees at these fairs and festivals.
Also active in the day’s discussion were Bernard O’Donnell, Director of Communications Services for the state’s Department of Administrative Services; Mark Raymond, Connecticut’s Chief Information Officer; and Joseph R. Sastre, who is the International Association of Emergency Managers representative to the FirstNet Public Safety Advisory Committee. I want to thank them and all the other state, local, and tribal stakeholders that took time to actively participate in the initial consultation. It was inspiring to see Connecticut’s dedication to the long-term process of developing and deploying the FirstNet network.
Thanks,
-Dave
