LACK OF COMMUNICATION PROVED CRIPPLING -- RESCUE, SAFETY, RECOVERY EFFORTS WERE HINDERED

by Laura Maggi

BATON ROUGE – Practically from the moment Hurricane Katrina barreled across the New Orleans area, state officials complained that one of the major problems with rescue, safety and recovery efforts was the sheer inability to communicate.

“Part of the big problem is the communications network is down,” Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the day after the storm; cell phones, BlackBerries and land lines were useless at the moment when coordination between the various branches of government was the most critical. Local officials, including emergency personnel, often were unable to contact the state and even had problems communicating with each other within a parish.

Katrina’s Category 4 winds certainly packed a powerful punch, but officials had warning that communications could be significantly disrupted during a major disaster.  There was the example of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York, when firefighters and police could not talk to each other. Since then, U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner, noted last week, the federal government has doled out about $280 million – $19 million of which went to Louisiana – to make it easier for emergency workers from different agencies to communicate. But in many cases, communications have not improved, he said.

In Louisiana, problems had surfaced in far less serious storms, for example, during Hurricane Lili and Tropical Storm Isidore in the fall of 2002. Leading politicians, including then-Gov. Mike Foster, noted the difficulties in coordinating the activities of various agencies, from the State Police to the National Guard to shelters.

State officials last week said that before Hurricane Katrina they were moving aggressively toward “interoperability,” the buzzword that means allowing local and state agencies to communicate with each other. They also wanted to implement greater “redundancy”: having the technological backups to guarantee coverage if things go awry.  The problem was money, said Lt. Col. Joey Booth, who is in charge of the crisis response and special operations section of the State Police.

But that is no longer a problem. Since Katrina, Motorola Inc. has received a $16.9 million contract, which FEMA is paying for, to make the radio infrastructure in the New Orleans area interoperable, with sufficient backups. The State Police plan to have the new system up and running in New Orleans in a week’s time.

But when Katrina hit, plans to revamp the emergency communications systems were still in the works. During the aftermath of the storm, the major issue wasn’t necessarily interoperability, but just making sure first responders had radios,  Booth said.

The New Orleans Police Department had no real communications system. A big tower used for radio communication in Jefferson Parish went down during the storm, while transmitters got soaked in flooded St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, said Kelly Kirwan, a vice president of sales for Motorola, which provides radio services for many of the parishes surrounding New Orleans. Radio capabilities have been restored in Jefferson, but it could take a while to fix the problems in the more water-logged parishes, he said.

As technicians worked to get the system back up, it became overloaded with users as local emergency personnel, as well as those on state and federal levels, started using it, said Rex McDonald, director of the information technology division for the State Police.

Hurricane Katrina also sent many first responders in southeast Louisiana back to a less technologically advanced time. In some of the rural parishes, the major link to the outside world involved the old-fashioned ham radio operators who volunteer their time at local emergency centers and relay messages back to the state Office of Emergency Preparedness.

In Washington Parish, local officials reached the state through a ham operator, who set up at the emergency center after the storm and worked with other radio aficionados to help coordinate the evacuation of a local nursing home. State Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, and Parish President Tory Taylor also resorted to driving to Baton Rouge to ask for food, water and supplies.

After the storm, the federal government also brought in satellite phones, which officials have given mixed reviews.

Even when short-range communication was possible, the fact that different agencies operate on different frequencies – often using incompatible equipment – makes executing rescue missions in St. Bernard Parish even more difficult, state Sen. Walter Boasso, R-Chalmette, said. Fire fighters and police officers could not talk to each other, or with the ferry operator who needed to bring evacuees to Algiers Point.

“It seems like we should have one system, so everybody can talk to each other,” Boasso said.

As the federal money to rebuild the communications networks comes pouring into the state, several officials said a priority should be making sure it is done right. “If we don’t solve this interoperable problem, we will be back here again,” said state Sen. Robert Barham, R-Oak Ridge, chairman of a select committee on homeland security.

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