Big Investments, Big Payoff

     In the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, recent upgrades to the public safety radio and computer-aided dispatch systems paid huge dividends during the response to last year's Interstate 35 bridge collapse.

     The upgrade process started in 2002, when public safety leaders from the metro Twin Cities area attended FEMA training that prompted an assessment of their response vulnerabilities. One of the weaknesses they identified was their existing radio systems. Police were on VHF, EMS and fire were on UHF.

     "We had two disparate systems that couldn't talk to each other," recalls John Dejung, director of the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center, which dispatches police and fire. "We could cross-patch here at the dispatch center, but it was clunky and not effective for on-the-fly interoperability."

     The solution was a trunked interagency 800 MHz Motorola radio system that was implemented across the metro area. The bridge collapse was its first big test, and the system aced it. It withstood more than 114,000 transmissions during the incident response—double its normal load. Only 67 calls were delayed more than 10 seconds; only one high-priority transmission got a busy signal in the first six hours. "It absolutely did what it was supposed to do," says Chris Kummer, manager of the Hennepin Co. Medical Center EMS Communication Center, which handles the region's EMS dispatch. "It worked like we expected, and we didn't have any failures."

     Minnesota's Statewide Radio Board is now in the process of extending the 800 network statewide, eventually bringing improved interoperability to all state agencies.

TRACKING RESOURCES
     The upgrade of the regional CAD system was even newer when the bridge collapsed: A new TriTech VisiCAD system had just gone live in March 2007. The new system not only linked everyone's dispatch information, it also brought luxuries like automatic vehicle location, GIS mapping and automatic closest-unit dispatch. "It gave dispatchers a lot more information at their fingertips," says Kummer. "The issue with the bridge collapse was that the scene was so big—it crossed a river, and we had four different sectors—and it was critical to know where each rig was. With the mapping, dispatchers could visualize where all the units were."

     There were additional aspects to communication and information exchange during the incident. A municipal Wi-Fi network was being deployed at the time of the collapse, and though only around three-quarters complete, it was fully operational in the downtown area where the collapse occurred. As rescue efforts concluded and recovery began on the night of August 1, officials set up a series of cameras that delivered images over the network back to the EOC and command posts.

     Cell phones also played a role. As the 9-1-1 calls started coming in just after 6 p.m., officials contacted local carriers with a plea to beef up their capabilities; they rapidly complied.

     "We had some phone constraints, in particular from cell callers trying to get through, but it was mitigated pretty quick by the phone companies providing extra service," Dejung says. "That's something you can't ignore. You need to think about phone capability if everybody and their mother is trying to call."

     "Everybody and their mother" included EMS, which led to one of the few problems with the response. Ambulance transport destinations in the area are typically coordinated by the West Medical Resource Control Center (WMRCC), part of the HCMC EMS Communication Center. Since 2003, though, HCMC EMS providers have been able to use a phone-tree system that lets them contact hospital staff directly via cell, without a human intermediary. This method was preferred by local physicians, who could take such calls from wherever in the hospital they were.

     During the bridge response, providers fell back on this method despite instructions to coordinate transports through WMRCC. The result was widespread confusion, an inability to track patients, and delays in determining where victims had been taken. "When we put that mechanism in place, we thought it was a great idea that would cut down on human workload," says Kummer. "But over time, we've found we need the human in the mix. The bridge collapse was just the last straw. Every major incident we had, the paramedics fell back on what they did every day: They picked up the cell phones and called the hospitals directly. We had no way to control the transport of patients and no way to really know where they were going, because the radio traffic was so overwhelming."

     As a result, there's now a new policy: Cell phones are no longer used. Transport discussions all occur by radio, and all communications are relayed through the control center.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
     Beyond the praise for all in the official USFA recap of the response, the Minneapolis 9-1-1 Center was also acknowledged for its performance with the E9-1-1 Institute's 2008 9-1-1 Outstanding Call Center Award. Technology certainly contributed to that. But staff at both comms hubs credit something just as important in any major-incident response: relationships.

     Their staffs, along with others across the Twin Cities public safety continuum, had done substantial planning beforehand, with key officials resolving problems and meshing with their colleagues. This resulted in a level of cooperation and coordination during the collapse response that the USFA cited as a best practice. "Strong working relationships and knowledge of roles and procedures were arguably the greatest strengths of the Minneapolis emergency services community's response," it said in its report (0I-35W Bridge Collapse and Response, available at www.usfa.dhs.gov).

     "The radio system has brought a lot of people together, and we're all talking more than we ever have," says Kummer. "That didn't happen before the radio system, and it's happened even more since the bridge collapse. It's all just heightened our awareness of the need for regional cooperation and interoperability."