Posted on Tuesday, 4th May 2010 by Patrick Dorwin
“I have young men and women who go into burning buildings,” Salter said. “What if they are in there and can’t hear a call to evacuate the building because it is about to collapse? I am not going to go knock on a door and tell someone, ‘I’m sorry, your son or daughter is dead because they couldn’t call for help.’”
-Patriot News: Firefighters say radio glitches hamper their efforts on calls involving York, Cumberland counties
Fire Departments around the country are realizing that by using OpenSky radios, they are cut off from help. This is something that Milwaukee and surrounding communities are also dealing with as police officers in the many area departments can no longer communicate, and soon, the Milwaukee Fire Department will be in the same position.
Firefighters from Cumberland County responding to a fire April 29 in Newberry Township were unable to communicate by radio with their York County counterparts due to ongoing issues with the two counties’ incompatible radio systems, Lewisberry Community Fire Company Chief Mark Albright said.
Crews from Cumberland County responding to the fire, which destroyed two mobile homes, arrived at the scene in Miller’s Skyview Trailer Park only to find they could not talk by radio with Albright, who was in command. “Something didn’t work,” said Albright, who had to find other ways to let the Cumberland County responders know where he wanted them positioned.
In this instance, it proved to be a relatively minor glitch. Nobody was injured. Firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze before it burned the homes involved into ashes.
But chiefs in both counties worry the day could come when the inability to communicate could have a more serious impact, leading to the death of injury of firefighters or hampering the ability to effectively fight a fire.
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4 Responses to “OpenSky”
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May 4th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
meanwhile, while dumping close to 20 million dollars into opensky, officers are forced to attempt to write reports on barely functioning computers running windows 98/2000 at certain districts. And when we get brand new squads, the computers are running windows xp, which makes no sense to me.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Isn’t Flynn’s contract up in 2011? Despite his tough talk, he doesn’t impress me as a leader, he’s a manager- a suit. You guys are his employees, not his men and women. He’ll probably take his “Pal” with him when he leaves.
They’ll fix the radios after the election by getting a new system. There’s no way Barrett will ask Scott Walker to get put on the county radio system and admit what a colossal failure his administration has been.
May 4th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Every day means more numbers after the dollar sign on that nice big check. To bad a cop will be hurt.
May 6th, 2010 at 9:24 am
I am betting firefighters will not be silent about radio problems. Hopefully the new Chief will put a stop to any installations until all the problems are fixed, and firefighters do a lot of testing with portables.