By Joseph Deinlein
The Evening Sun
HANOVER, Pa. — Talk is under way to solve the 911 radio problems in the Hanover area, local appointed and elected officials said.
But there’s still no definitive solution.
In recent days, members of Hanover Borough Council spoke privately with members of the York County Board of Commissioners, who agreed to meet with folks from the southwestern corner of the county to discuss difficulties with the P-25 digital trunked radio.
Meanwhile, members of the Penn Township Fire Department and the township board of commissioners met with folks from York County Emergency Services, who reviewed some ideas. Those included building a new tower, or making taller the existing tower in the Iron Ridge area of the Pigeon Hills.
Both Hanover’s council and Penn Township’s commissioners a few weeks ago sent letters to the county board of commissioners and Eric Bistline, director of York County Emergency Services, complaining about the need to fix things.
Both received a response letter from Bistline, who outlined all that has been done to make the new system work at “95-percent coverage 95-percent of the time,” which is the industry standard. In fact, most fire companies and police forces in the rest of the county have reported few problems.
“That’s great,” Borough Manager Bruce Rebert told the council during its planning meeting Wednesday. “But it doesn’t solve the problem (in Hanover). We’re here to make it work.”
The problems entail missed or dropped signals to the digital radios, as well as the pagers volunteer and paid firefighters carry to notify them of a call. In some cases, the radios work sporadically, where out of three radios next to each other, only one will receive a transmission. Fire officials also have reported not being able to communicate with their firefighters inside a building, creating major safety issues.
As a result, the fire chiefs of Hanover and Penn Township fire departments, as well as Pleasant Hill and Jefferson fire companies have decided their firefighters will use their old, analog radios while on fire scenes to communicate with each other.
Bistline said the new radios do have a feature, known as “talk-around” that allows them to communicate radio to radio, essentially doing the same thing as the old analog radios.
But Hanover Fire Commissioner James Roth and Penn Township Fire Chief Jan Cromer both have said the feature is unreliable, and is difficult to operate because it involves pushing several buttons to change channels.
“When you’ve got a firefighter in a smoky building, trying to switch over and push these buttons isn’t easy,” Roth said.
Currently, workers from Harris Corp., the company that bought original radio vendor M/A-COM, have been trying to reprogram the radios so the function is easier to switch on, Bistline said.
In the meantime, the Hanover council and the Penn Township commissioners separately agreed to have a sit-down with the York County Commissioners at an open meeting. Borough Council members suggested the Guthrie Memorial Library as a location, so officials other municipalities and area fire companies can attend.
“We’re going to request an audience with the county commissioners,” said township board president Craig Prieber during a public safety committee Tuesday. “A tax dollar from Penn Township should be worth the same as a tax dollar from York.”
Copyright 2009 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved