‘Occupy’ organizer Pete Thottam joins Robert Kovacik on Nonstop News LA to talk about Occupy movement’s role in Pasadena’s annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
As Pasadena officials brace for hundreds of thousands of Rose Parade and Rose Bowl revelers this weekend, city personnel will use a new emergency radio system they say will help streamline communications among disparate city departments.
The new system allows police and fire authorities to toggle between emergency radio channels by voice and allows for greater range and access between city departments. Pasadena joins seven cities from the coast to San Bernardino County that are integrated into the same system, officials said.
The upgrade replaces a decades-old system and comes nearly a year before a federal mandate created in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that calls for overhauls to aging emergency radio systems.
“The way that it was before, it was the telephone game,” said Steven Page, Pasadena’s telecommunications supervisor. “Now after 30 years of bouncing between bands we have one common platform for all of our city.”
But Kevin Nida, president of the California State Firefighters' Association, a group that represents 23,000 career and volunteer firefighters across the state, expressed concerns. Nearby LA is not on the new system, he said.
“Let’s say some huge calamity happens in Pasadena,” said Nida. “They’re not going to be able to talk on that system.”
Pasadena officials say they’ve prepared for such contingencies. They’re giving emergency personnel extra radios so that firefighters from agencies without the new technology can communicate, said Pasadena Fire Department Battalion Chief Jon Trautwein.
“I can give a couple more portables and that officer can monitor multiple frequencies,” he said.
Police and fire agencies across the country are working to upgrade their systems by the Jan. 1, 2013 deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of radio communication problems encountered by emergency personnel during the terrorist attacks in New York. Some 343 firefighters died in the aftermath of the attacks. The deadline is also for non-emergency radio users to cut down on bandwidth use.
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Pasadena is deploying its $7 million system just in time for the biggest weekend of city’s year. Officials expect some 700,000 people to converge along the city core’s Colorado Boulevard for the Rose Parade. Officials expect a sold-out crowd of 93,000 at Monday Rose Bowl game between Wisconsin Badgers and Oregon Ducks.
One of the big pluses of the new system is that first responders won’t have to potentially fumble around in the dark trying to find the right key to select to change to a new channel, said Christina Kuo, public information officer for Pasadena. Instead, emergency personnel will be able to hear the name of the selected channel announced by the radio. The city has also a central controller who can direct emergency personnel to alternate channels and officials have built in redundancies in case the system is taken offline by an earthquake or another disaster.
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