By Dave Buchanan, Director of State Consultation
With low-lying areas of south-central Kansas experiencing flooding from heavy rains, 60 state and local government and public safety professionals gathered in Topeka for the state’s Initial Consultation Meeting with FirstNet earlier this year.
Kansas is unlike many large states west of the Mississippi River, in that it does not have large unpopulated areas of forests, mountains, or wilderness. Mark Dodd, Director of the Kansas State Gaming Agency and Native American Affairs Liaison with the Kansas Governor’s Office, stressed that Kansas’s population numbers do not accurately represent the needs of public safety in the state. “From a population standpoint, you would look at Kansas and say it is very rural, but our needs are greater than that would indicate because of the way we are laid out,” Mr. Dodd told the group.
The observations expressed by Mr. Dodd and other Kansas attendees, including Stanley Adams of the Kansas Department of Commerce, are why the state consultation process with FirstNet and the current data collection efforts are critical. The state-provided data and consultation input will inform FirstNet decisions around network deployment.
Kansas Statewide Interoperability Coordinator and FirstNet Single Point of Contact (SPOC) Jason Bryant and his team have been traveling to each of Kansas’s 105 counties, beginning the process of collecting data from the state’s 1,400+ public safety entities to ensure the state’s needs are clearly identified. Kansas also has the benefit of efforts by its Department of Commerce, which has worked with the providers in the state to understand where service currently exists. The Kansas Data Access and Support Center (DASC) has been mapping that information; and you can see through their maps that the needs of Kansas are diverse. In Stanton County, near the Colorado Border, less than 10 percent of the population has access to high speed broadband. In Wyandotte County, which contains Kansas City, coverage is excellent.
The use cases presented by the state also provided additional information about Kansas’s composition and coverage needs.
Southwest Kansas Communications and Response to Bear Creek Fire
Vaughn Lorenson, Stanton County Emergency Management
On March 22, 2011, a significant grass fire flared in the Bear Creek area of Stanton County and consumed 69 acres of grassland. Mr. Lorenson explained that during the fire, 188 responders from both Kansas and neighboring Colorado battled the blaze, which was further fueled by high winds.
During the fire, first responders lost all radio communication due to interference from smoke, and cell phone service, which is spotty throughout the county, and was not available in the area near the Colorado border where the fire started. With no reliable communications, Mr. Lorenson said the most pressing question was, “how are my first responders being protected?” At one point during the response, a fire truck was stuck down in the creek, and there was no way to alert other responders.
Mr. Lorenson then talked about how having FirstNet could have helped the response. With reliable cell and data service, first responders could have supplemented radio service and had interoperability with Colorado. “FirstNet needs to be available to rural and frontier areas first and foremost,” Mr. Lorenson said. “We often feel left out and forgotten.”
Coverage in Tribal Lands
Shawn Walker, Chief of Police, Prairie Band of Potawatomi Tribal Police Department
The tribal lands of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation are located about 20 miles north of Topeka. Two neighboring county radio systems provide some coverage, but the reservation is on the extreme side of the overlap and radio reliability is poor. There is a tower that provides cell coverage to the Prairie Band Casino and Resort and the highway, but Chief Walker reported that if you go north or south of the tower, coverage is no longer available. Even where coverage is available, capacity is rapidly affected if the casino is busy. The tribe has tried working through grant funding and with the mobile companies to improve coverage without success, and the lack of reliable communications puts tribal officers and the county officers who respond on tribal lands at risk.
Coverage in an Urban County with Special Events
Matt May, Director, Wyandotte County Emergency Management
Wyandotte County shares a county line with Missouri in the greater Kansas City area. It is not a geographically large county, but it is among Kansas’s most populous areas with 160,000 permanent residents. According to Mr. May, the county’s population swells by 50,000 people each workday, and it can nearly double with events at the county’s large soccer facility or its 70,000+ seat racetrack.
In Wyandotte, the concern is not coverage but the ability of mobile networks to keep up the daily increase in population and the surge of visitors for special events. For NASCAR events at the Kansas Speedway, public safety agencies from other jurisdictions come in through paid assistance and mutual aid, and the county works regularly with its partners in Missouri. They need strong data coverage and a system that is interoperable and can handle an increase in personnel.
Wyandotte is also looking for the capacity to do more with mobile data for public safety. Mr. May reported that the county has 150 cameras throughout it, with 20 around the speedway. “I have always had a vision that the feeds from those cameras would be easily streamable,” he said. In his vision for a public safety broadband network, the officer who is responding to the hostage situation in the bank would be able to easily access the camera footage and see into that bank. “He should know what color shirt the suspect is wearing,” Mr. May said.
Throughout the day, the Kansas attendees engaged with FirstNet in a lively discussion. Kansas asked some tough questions and showed that they are full engaged in this effort. Thank you to SPOC Jason Bryant and attendees for a great meeting.
-Dave
