The Cupertino Courier

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Planning to get cities on the same frequency in emergencies

By Hugh Biggar

The Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project has announced plans to connect 13 area call centers in an ongoing effort to improve regional emergency communications.

The project has selected FATPOT Technologies to create software to connect Santa Clara County Computer Aided Dispatch systems. In cities such as Cupertino, radio communications mostly act independently from those in other cities, which can cause problems when different jurisdictions are responding to the same emergency.

"It's an area-wide problem," said Dave Knapp, Cupertino's city manager and a member of the task force. "It's basically an attempt to get the 13 dispatch centers in the county to be able to talk to each other."

In the case of a fire at Santana Row last summer, for example, some emergency responders had to rely on a human relay system to coordinate operations--a system that significantly slows down response time.

"It's a question of capacity," said John Pilger, Sunnyvale's communications officer. "There are some channels available for communicating, but they aren't adequate. It's like a party line, and you can have people talking over each other."

Pilger said while Sunnyvale's public safety personnel can talk with each other, as they did at the recent fire at the city's water treatment plant, there can be problems coordinating a response with neighboring cities such as Mountain View or Cupertino.

"Historically, communities developed as isolated [from each other], and now there is a variety of services that may be needed in the case of a big event," Knapp said. "If a bridge goes down, say, you may have to call public works as well as the county fire department."

In response to this need, the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project formed in 1998 to improve public- safety radio communications. The events of 9-11, in which many of the emergency crews had communications difficulties, only added to the sense of urgency in case of a disaster.

FATPOT Technologies, which will work with Northrop Grumman, now hopes to create a software solution to help rapidly integrate data. Among the 13 cities involved in the program are Sunnyvale, Saratoga, Campbell, San Jose and Los Gatos.

"This technology is a way to see how they might connect the dispatch centers," Knapp said. "The next step is implementation."