By Clay Barbour
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis region still has a ways to go before being fully prepared for a disaster, according to a recent study released by the Department of Homeland Security.
The agency announced Wednesday a scorecard covering 75 urban and metropolitan areas, grading how effectively different emergency response personnel communicate on a regional basis.
It has been found that during a disaster, communication is often a problem between agencies on different radio frequencies.
According to the study, St. Louis rated in the middle of the pack. The study did not place a numerical ranking on the metropolitan areas.
The region, which includes five counties in Missouri and three in Illinois, scored high marks for having a command structure and guidelines in place. It needed work, however, on implementing actual communication between all agencies.
“We still have a ways to go, but we’re getting there,” said William Karabas, Florissant police chief and chairman of the region’s interoperational advisory committee. It’s not an easy task, said Karabas, considering there are more than 100 agencies working in the St. Louis area.
The advisory committee, which started in 2003, provided the Homeland Security Department with the information for its study. The topic is one Karabas became interested in 14 years ago.
In 1993, Karabas worked a case that involved an overturned truck on Highway 40 (Interstate 64). Several fire departments and police stations responded, all of them on different radio frequencies.
“It was chaos,” he said. “And that is usually the case whenever something big happens. Communications is always the problem.”
This issue came to national attention during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many firefighters climbing the World Trade Center towers died after they were unable to hear police radio warnings to leave the crumbling buildings.
And just over a year ago, Hurricane Katrina underscored communication problems when radio transmissions were hindered because the storm toppled towers.
A separate report the Homeland Security Department released last month stated that emergency workers from different agencies are capable of talking to one another in two-thirds of 6,800 U.S. communities surveyed. But the agency reported that only about 10 percent of them have systems so fully developed that they can communicate routinely.
According to the study released Wednesday, only six of 75 U.S. metropolitan areas won the highest grades for their emergency agencies’ ability to communicate during a disaster.
The best ratings went to Washington; San Diego; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Columbus, Ohio; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Laramie County, Wyo.
In an overview, the report said all 75 areas surveyed have policies in place for helping their emergency workers communicate. But it cautioned that regular testing and exercises are needed “to effectively link disparate systems.”
Karabas said the St. Louis region has received more than $6 million from the federal government in 2006 for communication upgrades that will help to bridge the gap. But, he said, more is needed. “We know the solution and that’s more money,” he said.