SIGNALS FROM GROUND ZERO

U.S. public safety networks are hard to disrupt. Weeks after the attack on New York’s World Trade Center, public safety communicators continue to assess how badly their networks have been damaged. The bottom line is, communications systems were battered but not beaten.

The fall of a legendary site

As tower sites go, 1 World Trade Center was one of the best in the world — certainly the best in New York City for wide-area coverage. Small wonder: with a rooftop 1,368 feet above street level, 1 WTC was the highest building on the East Coast. The nearly one acre of rooftop bristled with antennas spaced at about every five feet.

“It offered the most efficient coverage for public safety, or indeed any kind of RF transmission,” said John Paleski, president of Old Bridge, NJ-based Subcarrier Communications. Subcarrier, a communications site management company, lost numerous antennas when 1 WTC collapsed.

Pinnacle Towers’ Joe Furmanek, director of investor relations, echoed Paleski’s assessment. Based in Sarasota County, FL, Pinnacle had the management contract for 42 non-broadcast antennas on 1 WTC’s rooftop.

“We covered public safety networks, paging firms, cab companies — the works,” Furmanek said. Federal government agencies were affected as well. Furmanek wasn’t at liberty to identify them beyond saying, “Just think of all the highest-level ones in the country. They were all there.”

Height alone didn’t make 1 WTC’s rooftop ideal for transmission; it was also the layout.

“With the exception of the broadcast tower, you had a very flat, uncluttered roof to work with,” explained Pinnacle President Ben Gaboury. This made it possible to mount the antennas “in almost a geometric pattern,” he added, with the cables traveling neatly through hatchways “into the multiple equipment rooms one floor below.”

For Richard Tell, losing the WTC sites was like losing a personal friend. Tell, the president of Las Vegas-based Richard Tell Associates, had been the key RF safety consultant to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Motorola and the WTC broadcasters since 1996. Tell assisted the Port Authority in developing a comprehensive RF safety program for the buildings. The rooftops had been measured and modeled on numerous occasions to ensure that technicians and maintenance workers on the roof of 1 WTC — and visitors viewing the city from the roof of 2 WTC — would be safe.

“It was a truly amazing transmission site,” recalled Tell. Having performed RF field measurements for the broadcast mast earlier this year, he added that “to see the WTC come down along with its 351-foot antenna mast made me feel sick.”

All of the city’s TV stations used the antenna mast on 1 WTC. So did four commercial FM radio stations. All went off the air when the building fell. Only one, WCBS (Channel 2) had a backup facility in place at the Empire State Building.

As for non-broadcast applications, the rooftops of 1 WTC and its twin, 2 WTC, were home to a veritable forest of antennas — 98 in all. These served a wide range of networks, including the Port Authority’s 800MHz Ericsson EDACS trunking system, which was lost in the fire and building collapse. One of the federal government’s 400MHz Motorola Smartnet trunking systems was destroyed as well, said Larry Van Horn, an editor with Monitoring Times, a magazine for scanner enthusiasts.

“Even the New Jersey Highway Patrol took a hit,” Van Horn said, because two-thirds of New Jersey was covered by an 800MHz trunking system on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, the New York State Police’s network was disrupted, but not destroyed, when 2 WTC disintegrated. That site was home to the state police 800MHz Ericsson Metro-21 EDACS trunking transmitters and antennas. Fortunately, the NYSP has sites and towers in other parts of the city.

In the midst of all this mayhem, FDNY’s communications infrastructure emerged relatively unscathed. “The fire department’s central offices each have their own transmitter antennas,” said a source within the department. Because none of these sites was located at the World Trade Center, “they were completely unaffected,” the source said.

Of course, this only applies to the FDNY’s dispatch function. Beyond the immeasurable human cost, hundreds of mobile and portable radios were lost when the Twin Towers collapsed on emergency responders from FDNY/EMS, NYPD, the Port Authority and other emergency agencies. FDNY’s Field Communications Unit, which was at the World Trade Center, was also seriously damaged when 1 WTC collapsed.

Meanwhile, the city of New York’s 15-channel Motorola Smartnet System network remained fully operational during the crisis. According to Steve Gorecki, public relations manager for Motorola’s North America Group, it served as “a primary system used for interoperability.” The city’s Department of Information and Telecommunication Technology (DoITT) was in charge of running it.

Coping with the unthinkable

When the World Trade Center was lost, the New York State Police reacted quickly. The agency’s response was pragmatic and practical: “We just took an antenna at another one of our sites and pointed it down into Manhattan,” said State Police Dispatcher Sgt. Bob Jones. Of course, this was a makeshift measure, as was the State Police’s deployment of VHF hand-helds. What was needed was a replacement for the WTC site, and the State Police soon found one at the midtown Chrysler Building. Surprisingly, this installation went extremely fast, Jones said. In fact, “We had it up and running by the evening of the 12th.” Fortuitously, previous tenants at the Chrysler Building site had left four antennas in place when they moved out. Better still, these tenants had also left antenna combiners behind, “so we were able to utilize the existing antennas,” Jones said.

This left the need for a transmitter. The day was saved by M/A-COM, which rushed a five-channel Ericsson independent 800MHz trunking system to the site. M/A-COM also threw in 200 hand-helds for good measure.

Today, the coverage being provided by the State Police’s Chrysler building site is “very good,” said Jones. “We now pretty much have the whole city back.”

With the NYSP back on air, the next step will be to build a more permanent replacement site. “We’re looking at probably trying to stay in the Chrysler building,” Jones said, “but obviously we have to do a lot of propagation studies.”

Motorola also distinguished itself by sending 86 truckloads of gear to New York. These supplies included a new 15-channel Motorola 800MHz backup system for the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, which runs on the DoITT’s Smartnet System. Motorola employees worked around the clock to build the backup system, doing in 30 hours what usually takes three weeks. P & R Communications, Dayton, OH, supplied a trailer-mounted, 107-foot tower, antennas and grounding equipment. Beyond this, Motorola delivered separate trailer-mounted 800MHz and 900MHz radio systems to New York.

“We’ve also sent in 10,000 portable radios and 16,000 batteries,” said Motorola’s Gorecki.

Rebuilding with resolve, realism

Clearly, these emergency solutions (which also include the deployment of HF radios) are no substitute for the loss of the WTC platform. It’s still unknown what will end up replacing the World Trade towers, with all their wonderful height. Chances are that if any structures are erected at the site in South Manhattan in the distant future, they will be no more than 50 to 60 stories tall, in line with current architectural trends and the realities of urban firefighting.

Even if a new World Trade Center should rise, phoenix-like, back up to 110 stories, would telecom companies put all their eggs in one basket again? It’s not likely, said Subcarrier’s Paleski.

“We learned two lessons on Sept. 11,” Paleski said. “The first is not to concentrate all of one’s critical telecommunications facilities in one place. The second is to have a backup ready to go immediately, in case something unthinkable happens.

“No one learned this second point more cruelly than New York’s TV broadcasters,” Paleski added. “Why, WABC, WNBC, WWOR, WPIX and WNET had just finished installing their digital TV transmitters on 1 WTC, days before it was destroyed.”

It will be months before we know the full extent of how badly New York’s public safety networks were damaged. In fact, given the heightened emphasis on U.S. homeland security, we may never know. Were the city and state networks caught unprepared? Yes and no. Yes, in that no one expected the World Trade Center towers would be completely destroyed. No, in that backup plans were in place, and the people who manned them did their jobs, despite the catastrophe.

Careless is a freelance telecommunications writer based in Ottawa, ON, Canada. His email address is [email protected].

COMMUNICATIONS COMBATING CHAOS

Thousands of Americans cheered emergency workers as they arrived at ground zero. On MRT’s cover this month is one of the heroes they were cheering: Sgt. Brian Boyar of the New York City Sheriff’s Office Firearms and Tactics Unit.

An MRT public safety subscriber captured this moment in the 23-minute interval between the two collapses of the World Trade Center towers.

“When [2 WTC] collapsed, it was everyone running around. You just took care of one thing at a time, as you were going down the street. Guys were trapped everywhere,” said Michael Coppola, the 10-year subscriber who contributed this photograph.

Coppola was at this scene of horror because he was reporting on a two-way radio notification system for the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area called Metro Fire Radio.

Metro Fire Radio keeps members of public safety agencies and the press informed of ongoing emergencies. Individuals may also keep in touch with one another over the system. The system uses UHF radios (452.175MHz) to communicate across several repeater systems throughout the metropolitan area. When a member hears of an incident, he retransmits the information over the radio system. Metro Fire Radio is “an off-duty type of club” that provides a benefit to public safety members, according to Coppola.

“Since it has been established, Metro Fire Radio has grown to a membership of over 120 members,” Coppola said. “Most agencies in our area that have UHF radios dedicate a channel for our organization.” Members also take photos of the incidents and coordinate with arson squads, emergency agencies and the press afterward.

Coppola also was there because he wears all three public safety hats: He is a police officer, a firefighter and an EMT. As an officer with the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police in New Jersey, Coppola helps the Phoenix Team, a crisis-intervention unit, among many other public safety ventures.

On Sept. 11, he and two other Metro Fire Radio members, Dave LaGruth and Matt Schneiderman, arrived about eight blocks away from the WTC, in front of the NYPD 1st Precinct. They began taking photos — “ Our original reason for going to this job,” Coppola said. But when 2 WTC collapsed, and they reached the initial-response staging area, they had no time to take pictures. “We immediately began washing off firefighters who couldn’t breath because they were covered in debris and ash. After we ‘rehabbed’ the brothers in the area, we started putting out numerous debris fires with fire extinguishers,” Coppola said.

The group soon had to take cover again as the north tower collapsed. Once the situation stabilized, they “got right back to putting out even more fires and dodging exploding car fires — photographing what we could when we could,” Coppola said.

In this way, Metro Fire Radio played its part in this disaster that motivated many Americans to help, whether in giving blood, contributing money or praying.

“Looking back on the TV stations when we got home, it was like watching the whole thing in ‘mute’ without the screams and sound of 110 stories crashing to the ground,” Coppola said.
— N. Chandler

DEDICATION

At press time, it is just four weeks since the simultaneous terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the attack that was thwarted in the skies of Pennsylvania by selfless common citizens.

It is still impossible to comprehensively report on the human cost of these atrocities — these wholesale mass murders. MRT’s editors decided to focus on the repercussions in the telecommunications community and on public safety communications effects in particular.

We have combined our story by freelance telecommunications writer James Careless with contributions from the MRT staff to create this overview. The communications complications of an urban disaster led us to concentrate most of this report on the World Trade Center attack. This is not intended to diminish the tragedies in Pennsylvania and Washington.

Sept. 11 was National 9-1-1 Day, and hundreds of public servants gave what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.” Many valiant police, fire and emergency medical teams’ signals from ground zero went silent on Sept. 11. This report is dedicated to them and to the PSAP operators and dispatchers who supported them.
— The Editors

AN INDUSTRY RESPONDS

The events of Sept. 11 affected several trade associations and land mobile radio manufacturers, whether it was in cancellations or in their rush to aid the rescue and recovery workers:

AeroComm, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, helped cellular telephone companies and the Port Authority re-establish telephone and radio coverage at ground zero using infrared transceivers and reconfiguring existing cellular telephone infrastructure in New Jersey. Aerocomm personnel are also working with the Port Authority to restore its emergency public safety radio systems.

Nextel Communications, Reston, VA, began lending wireless telephones that day to federal, state and government agencies and to emergency service providers, such as the American Red Cross. More than 2,000 phones with unlimited cellphone and two-way radio service were delivered to New York, Washington and Boston.

Itronix donated 20 of its portable computers to the relief effort in New York. The computers can display three-dimensional models of debris in the area of the collapse. These renderings will assist in removal of the wreckage, as well as pinpoint the location of hazardous substances known to be in the buildings at the time of the collapse.

The Industrial Telecommunications Association canceled its 2001 Private Wireless Spectrum Management Conference and Exposition after what ITA President Laura Smith said was “careful consideration of all the relevant issues, as well as consultation with the leadership of ITA, USMSS and CICS.” On Sept. 12, ITA had postponed the conference, which was originally to be held Sept. 19-21 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington.

The Personal Communications Industry Association’s GlobalXChange scheduled for Sept. 11 in Los Angeles was canceled. Two industry figures — COO of Metrocall Steven Jacoby and Karen Kincaid, a partner in a Washington law firm — died on American Airlines Flight 77.
— K. Taylor

STILE: BACKUP IS CRUCIAL

Public safety communications coordination in New York is complicated enough on an average day. In the wake of the WTC attack, the process has become even thornier. Nevertheless, for Vincent Stile, those thorns surround a rose, and that rose is called cooperation.

Stile, of the Suffolk County Police Communications Bureau on Long Island, NY, is the local frequency advisor for Southern New York for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials — International. He is also APCO’s first vice president, and according to APCO’s leadership succession, he will become its president in 2003.

“We have enough backup,” Stile said of the state of the post-attack infrastructure. “Our biggest need is frequencies.”

New York public safety communications officials have been discussing action plans in case of a terrorist attack for more than 10 years, Stile said, and “Things have been working. These guys have been putting in 12-hour days.”

National 800MHz channels have been the primary routes for interoperability in the wake of the attack, Stile said, but it has been an effort to coordinate firefighters on VHF, police on UHF-T band and city services on 800MHz. In the future, interoperability channels in UHF may be the regional focus, based on a UHF-TV channel 16 waiver.

An attempt had been ongoing within Region 8 (New Jersey, southern New York and western Connecticut) to coordinate efforts and to create an overlay plan prior to the WTC attack. In particular, an 11-agency group in the NYC area, including police, fire, EMS and DOT, has been working on interoperability and mutual aid since 1990.

“We’ve been working on a communications network from Montauk Point (the eastern tip of Long Island) to Bergen County (NJ),” Stile said, but progress is slow because of the different technologies used by all the agencies in between. There is always bureaucracy as well. “We were just building out. Government works very slow, and money is always critical,” Stile said.

The response to the disaster held numerous bright spots, Stile said. The New York State Police was able to get a Special Temporary Authority from the FCC to relocate from the WTC to the Chrysler Building. With five stations in the area, that left NYSP with four sites for redundancy. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was able to switch its operations to its Staten Island site. The New York State Office of Emergency Management sent Stile two emergency base stations that were quickly tuned and deployed to sites in Nassau County and on Rikers Island.

Stile said he and his peers in Region 8 are preparing an overall report on how the public safety communications community responded to the events of Sept. 11 and what it requires to improve interoperability. To other agencies around the country that might be placed in an emergency communications situation before this crisis has passed, Stile had advice: “Have backup systems and redundancy. Establish alternate paths, whether you’re putting a system on a tower or a building. Have an overlay plan.”
— D. Keckler