Colorado statewide radio system causing static

10 years later | Colorado?s Homeland Security Spending

PART I: A Denver Post analysis of Homeland Security grants to Colorado since 9/11.

PART II: Colorado invested heavily in a statewide radio network that handles 86 million calls per year, but is not without problems.

<!??>PART III:, Coming Tuesday: Colorado has received millions in federal homeland security grants to spend on equipment, but records of just what was purchased are incomplete, making it impossible to know whether taxpayers got their money?s worth.

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  The Money Trail Map

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TRINIDAD ? Since Sept. 11, 2001, Las Animas County has spent $2 million in federal grant funds to join what Colorado officials hoped would become a statewide, seamless radio communications system.

A crucial test of that system came this spring and summer, when a severe drought fueled wildfires in New Mexico that spread across the state border. The largest county in Colorado battled 18 wildfires ? 11 of them large and, in one bad week, six simultaneously.

And the county?s new 800-megahertz radios didn?t work. Too many mountains, too few towers.

?South we were out of range, west we were out of range,? said Buddie Curro, chief of the volunteer Fisher?s Peak fire department just south of Trinidad. ?When the 800s are working, they?re working great. But when you go out of range, the 800s, when they?re gone, they?re totally gone.?

In Colorado, a statewide radio system has been the No. 1 priority of homeland security spending for a decade. It has been a costly undertaking. The state?s estimated investment lies between $200 million and $300 million, much of it from federal grants.

Away from the mountains, the system is working. Sheriff?s deputies at opposite ends of the state can hunt a fleeing suspect together. Multiple agencies responding to a school shooting can talk on the same channel.

?Go back to Columbine ? different responding agencies on different radio systems that couldn?t talk to each other,? said Kevin Klein, chief of the state Fire Safety Division. ?You had paralysis in the initial phase of the incident. We had to use runners to go back and forth to talk about what we?re going to do.?

The problem with the new system, in Las Animas and other mountainous counties, is twofold:

? The new towers that enable 800-MHz radios to transmit signals from tower to tower statewide depend on a visual line of sight between towers. Las Animas has three towers but would need four more to actually use the statewide system throughout the county.

? The U.S. Forest Service and the Colorado State Forest Service recognized that the expensive new radios don?t work well in the mountains. So they?ve kept their very high frequency, or VHF, radios and can?t talk to firefighters on 800-MHz radios anyway.

Lack of communication

At least $2 million later, ?even though everybody had a radio, folks still couldn?t talk to each other? as they battled a series of wildfires, said Bill Cordova, Las Animas County?s administrator and emergency manager.

To talk this year, some firefighters in Las Animas County finally borrowed VHF radios from the U.S. Forest Service ? and set aside their new homeland security radios.

It?s a problem Cordova fears will never be solved. Homeland security grants are dwindling after a decade of big spending, and the towers his county needs cost about $700,000 each.

?We don?t have $2.8 million to build more towers,? he said.

In the cities and on flatter land, the communications system works. The users range from police and firefighters to public works departments, hospitals and schools. Since 2005, annual traffic on this statewide system has grown from 50 million calls to 86 million.

The Colorado radio system ?is one of the most successful statewide interoperable communications systems that exists in the entire United States,? said Dara Hessee, spokeswoman for the Governor?s Office of Information Technology.

System is too ?fragile?

Hessee acknowledged that the system isn?t without problems. But she said it could be ? with enough money.

In Gunnison County, law enforcement officers still rely on ? and the county is investing in ? the older VHF radios. The county has seven VHF towers compared with four mountaintop sites for 800-MHz radios.

The 800-MHz system is too ?fragile,? said emergency manager Scott Morrill, who said he gets ?e-mails on a daily basis about outages here or there.?

The wavelengths for the 800-MHz system are stiff, unable to bend around mountains as well as VHF wavelengths can, he said. Also, the equipment needed to use the 800-MHz radios is sensitive to heat and requires air conditioning.

A Denver Post analysis found that the cost of radios varied widely, depending on the model and the features desired by the local agency ? antennae, shoulder microphones, belt clips, leather cases.

The price for the radios started at $1,440 apiece and went up to more than $4,000 for a model with the maximum number of channels. Even the prices for the same model varied by more than $1,000 in the same year, a difference homeland security coordinators attributed mainly to requests for added features. In some cases, local agencies spent more on accessories than on the radio itself.

For years, only one company ? Motorola ? made radios compatible with the statewide system. Of the 56,791 radios on the system today, 94 percent are Motorolas.

?It was Motorola and nobody else,? Cordova said. ?As a result, Motorola named their price.?

In the long run, the new Motorola radios may pose a financial problem for volunteer fire departments throughout Colorado. Their old VHF radios cost a few hundred dollars each. Federal homeland security grants paid for the Motorolas, but local agencies are responsible for replacement costs when the radios wear out.

In Las Animas County, the Fisher?s Peak fire department operates one main station, two substations and 12 pieces of fire equipment on a $61,000 budget.

Replace its 800 MHz radios? ?I don?t see how we could ever afford that,? Curro said. ?It?s hard enough to buy a $300 radio.?

For as long as he can, Curro will carry two different radios to fire calls. ?If the federal government said tomorrow, everyone has to be on 800 MHz, period, we wouldn?t be able to operate,? he said. ?We wouldn?t be able to do that. It would be beyond our means.?

David Olinger: 303-954-1498 or dolinger@denverpost.com

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Article source: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18827890

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