By Tim Stonesifer
The Evening Sun
YORK COUNTY, Pa. — Work continues on a York County 911 radio system that local fire chiefs say is still not right, but is at last improving.
Hanover Fire Commissioner Jim Roth said this week two new towers meant to boost 911 radio and paging signals for the Hanover area’s emergency responders were offline for a time last weekend, after there were mechanical problems with another tower in Spring Grove. The outage at towers on Hanover Hospital and the York Water Co.'s water tank at the West Manheim Township municipal building was only temporary, though, he said, as final kinks are worked out of the system.
If those problems can finally be solved, Roth said, the new $36 million digital radio system in York County may finally phase out local companies’ older, analog devices.
“I can say for myself the reception is much better, but it’s not 100 percent yet,” he said. “But it’s getting there, and we’re hoping to make a decision after the first of the year to stop carrying the old radios.”
Emergency responders in the Hanover area had been critical of the new system since it went into service last year. There were frequent complaints of missed or dropped radio calls and pages, particularly in the county’s southwestern corner.
As a result, firefighters from several area fire companies have been carrying both the new radios to communicate with York County’s dispatch center in Springettsbury Township, and older, analog radios to communicate with each other at emergency scenes.
Penn Township Fire Chief Jan Cromer said this week that problem remains, with firefighters for the time being still forced to switch between two devices, and dead spots that preclude completely switching to the new system.
“They’re still not doing what they’re supposed to do,” Cromer said of the radios. “Clearly there’s still work to be done.”
That work began last year, when York County commissioners responded to area fire officials’ complaints by agreeing to install the two new antennas, and Harris Corp., the radio system’s contractor, agreed to absorb about half the installation costs. That allowed the county to pay only $600,000, the amount then left in the account for the radio project.
The two towers were then added to one tower in the Pigeon Hills that serves Hanover currently, and total 25 scattered throughout the county.
Roth said this week the two new towers — which receive their signal in turn from the Spring Grove tower and then the one in the Pigeon Hills — should solve the problem of dead spots once they’re positioned correctly and are online. As for the issue of switching between analog and digital at the scene of a fire, the new radios have that capability, once the system is up and running, he said.
Still, the new system requires that firefighters press a button to reconfigure their radios from digital to analog in order to talk to one another during a working fire, Roth said, something they can’t generally do in a smoke-filled, burning building. But they simply have to think of that before getting to the scene, he said, and make the switch.
Roth said the newest-generation radios — which he recently saw demonstrated — make even that feature obsolete, allowing firefighters to change from digital to analog with the easy flick of a switch, even with eyes closed. But those cost about $5,000 per radio, and there’s no sense worrying about the newest technology when officials are still trying to get the system from last year in place, he said.
“The new ones I’ve seen do dances around our radios,” he said. “But we’ll just be happy when we get what we have up and going.”
Copyright 2010 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved