INDUSTRY NEWS
This article can be found on
page 4 of the Jan/Feb 1998
issue of 9-1-1 Magazine.
If only it was as simple as the Bat Signal.
Got an emergency? Flash that searchlight into the sky and wait for the guy in the bat suit to appear, and he'll quickly solve your emergency with a few gadgets carried in his utility belt or summoned by remote control from the bat cave.
Victim of a robbery? He'll lasso those jokers with a snap of a spring-powered Bat Rope.
Got a fire? There's a Bat Pumper at the ready with rocket-powered gpm.
Chest pains? Difficulty breathing? Bat-Medic to the rescue!
Trapped by flood, quake, or cave-in? There must be a Bat-USAR team to deploy.
(Just never have an emergency in the daylight or on a clear night. Clouds? You're saved.)
Unfortunately, public safety isn't as simple or as clever as all that. Imagine routing a dispatch on a robbery suspect described as wearing a green mask and green leotards with black question marks all over it...
"Units, Be On The Lookout, suspect described as WMA, 4-0, 200 lbs, balding, with a beak-shaped nose, walking with a distinct waddle. Suspect vehicle described as a giant rubber duck. Last seen..."
Public safety communications is, for better or worse, a lot more complicated. And growing more so every day. Public safety communications includes how we keep in touch with neighboring agencies, plan and develop new programs, organize and train new tactics, coordinate the response of a myriad of mutual aid resources. Tough to do that with just a Bat Signal, eh?
"Uh, Gotham IC, we have a Strike Team responding from Metropolis. They don't have any of our tactical frequencies but the Strike Team Leader says he will use his Super Hearing, go ahead..."
Years ago, however, the ability to communicate as we do today was equally as fanciful. A sheriff's deputy checking the status of an investigation in a neighboring town on a laptop in her patrolcar, then communicating online with the investigator? A color map of an incident base camp downloaded into a Strike Team Leader's car, flashing a route of travel from the Team's location to the Staging Area? A dispatch center uploading critical incident information to the State Emergency Operations Center, which in turns forwards it electronically to dozens of mutual aid coordinating centers throughout the state? A paramedic getting orders to administer medicine by a doctor in another city, over computer screen? Welcome to science fiction?
Welcome to the Internet.
Nowadays, a public safety agency without an Internet connection is like Commissioner Gordon without the Bat Signal. He might be able to reach Batman by other means, but it simply wouldn't be as expedient or as effective. A direct phone line to the Bat-cave only works if our hero is there. The Bat-Signal is virtually universal.
So is the Internet. With access to the World Wide Web, public safety agencies are given free access to the world, able to share and retrieve information with colleagues across the globe. The Information Age has become the Internet.
With this issue we celebrate the Internet with a utility-beltfull of features examining how the Internet can benefit Public Safety - from research to response coordination and beyond.
We also take a look at Urban Search And Rescue Teams, those FEMA task forces that are unfortunately all too-often necessary for deployment these days.
I'd also like to introduce two new members of our Editorial Advisory Board. Don Root is the Coastal Regional Telecommunications Coordinator for California's State Office of Emergency Services. Gary Ludwig has been our EMS columnist for many years, and is moving into our Editorial Board with this issue. The EMS Bureau Chief for the St. Louis Fire Department, Gary has also been responsible for the department's communications division, and is on the EMS Board of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Some of our long-time Editorial Board members depart with this issue, and I'd like to thank them for their assistance and input over the last half-dozen years, and wish them well.
