By Dave Buchanan, FirstNet Director of State Consultation
In our journey around the country to consult with the states and territories, FirstNet has the opportunity to enjoy meetings in a range of settings, venues, and buildings. Some are high tech conference centers, others are hotels or government settings. In Delaware, the state consultation took place in a beautiful Greek revival mansion that is a former Governor’s residence.
While the setting for the meeting was wonderful, the best part of our day was the dialog that took place inside the building. Led by the State Point of Contact, Mark Grubb, the meeting began with a keynote introduction from the Delaware Secretary of Safety and Homeland Security, Lewis Schiliro. “Delaware must keep up with technology”, he said, and he shared his excitement about bringing the benefits of FirstNet to Delaware. He said it was not productive for Delaware to put a “patchwork” on communications systems in order to keep public safety going amidst a budget crisis, and he assured the audience that his office would be available and supportive to all the services that will use FirstNet.
During the consultation, the 40 or so participants discussed several real-world scenarios, and how the FirstNet network could have improved the quality of the response.
Firefly Music Festival – Scott Bundek, Administrative Officer from the Kent County Department of Public Safety, gave an overview of this event that occurs each summer and attracts about 80,000 concert goers to the grounds of the Dover International Speedway. During the four day event, most of the emergency calls are in the medical area, which is staffed with 200 EMS personnel, 64 ambulances, 3 medical tents, and about 1400 volunteers. The emergency response teams learned that the event sponsors encourage the concert goers to blog, tweet, share videos, and post on other social media channels in order to attract more people to the event. This has the effect of overwhelming the limited commercial networks that are there. Rich Reed of FirstNet said, “When an event planner brings in a Cell on Light Truck (COLT) or a Cell on Wheels (COW) to expand capacity, the public will jump on it and fill it up. With FirstNet, public safety will have prioritized use of the nationwide public safety broadband network (NPSBN).”
Dover AFB C-5 crash – Bill Carrow, Deputy Director of the Delaware Division of Communications, described the scene on the morning of April 3, 2006, when a fully loaded C-5 cargo plane took off from Dover Delaware Air Force Base and suffered an engine failure. The plane turned around and crashed in a field while attempting to regain the runway. All 19 people on board survived. In terms of communications, it soon became evident that the news vehicles that came to watch the rescue saturated the available cell network. Public safety connectivity was lost with any live computer aided dispatch (CAD) services. The response team was using a commercial carrier for the county and state responders and the mobile command center. Bill said of FirstNet, “Had it been here then in 2006 we would not have had several issues, the downtime on the CAD system for example.”
Boater Search and Rescue - Scott Bundek returned to discuss the case of a nighttime water rescue on the Delaware Bay that took place in June of 2014. On a moonless night, a fisherman ran out of gas in his boat and drifted beyond cell coverage in the bay. The rescue effort started in Port Mahon, where a county command post was set up to send and receive data. There were 13 agencies involved, from DE and NJ, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard sent out coordinates of proposed search areas in a grid, but, unfortunately, there was no internet connection available for the search boats on the water or along the DE side beach areas. The boater was eventually found by aerial search. Scott said that interoperability is normally good with state agencies, but federal agencies in this instance could not interoperate, and the lack of internet from shore to ship hampered the search.
These real world scenarios help FirstNet to understand the states individually as well as put in context the capabilities that need to be in place nationwide. Delaware, with its roots in early America, is demonstrating thought leadership and eagerness to adopt cutting edge technology for public safety.
Thank you to all who worked hard for a very productive day.
-Dave
