College Station firefighters have found trouble spots around town that sometimes make it difficult to communicate over the radio.
On Thursday, the City Council approved the use of contingency funds to fix the problem by purchasing and installing mobile repeaters, devices that retransmit radio signals on units responding to fires.
“It’s a life-saving device,” said Firefighter Andy Throne, who has been researching solutions to the problem for about a year.
Firefighters started noticing the issue in certain university buildings and nearby apartments last year. There were times when firefighters standing feet away could not communicate due to various factors, including building materials and bunker gear, that did not allow their radios to connect with the radio tower, Battalion Chief Thomas Goehl said.
While firefighters are intermittently faced with the dial tone that means they have no signal, Goehl said first responders can’t afford to take the risk of losing communication when in a dangerous situation.
People are also reading…
Emergency personnel in the area use the digital Brazos Valley-Wide Area Communications System to communicate with dispatch and each other, but that technology requires a firefighter to speak into a radio that sends the signal to a radio tower that then transmits the information back to dispatch and fellow firefighters. It all happens in an instant, but if the firefighter’s radio signal can’t reach the tower, he can no longer communicate with colleagues in the same building.
While the digital system works well for most of their needs, Goehl said the use of the analog radio and repeater will be a good fix for those interior structural fires where digital radio doesn’t always work.
Installing the repeaters, which each cost about $2,700 for a total of $29,700, would allow firefighters to use an analogue radio channel to communicate more reliably with one another in those situations, Goehl said.
“When I’m on a fire [here], I don’t need to talk to Houston,” Throne said. “I need to talk to the firefighters 100 feet away from me.”
But analog radio doesn’t record communications or transmit signals to dispatch. That’s where the repeater comes in. It connects firefighters on the analog channel with dispatch and the digital channel.
While researching the fix, College Station firefighters met with those in Phoenix and New York who were having similar issues. Bryan Fire Chief Randy McGregor said his firefighters have not encountered the problem in Bryan.
The fix will increase safety and reliability for firefighters on a scene because, if the other technology were to fail, they would be able to maintain firefighter-to-firefighter communications, Goehl said.
“It definitely gives firefighters the sense of assurance that they’re getting out, that their signal is being heard,” he added.
