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Overcast FEMA provides $661,852 to emergency personnel
Radios in 192 ambulances across Nassau County, including the Franklin Square-Munson and Elmont fire departments, will be upgraded with new radio equipment to meet a federal radio mandate to improve communication between ambulances and police.
The local departments will be required to install radios with a more usable bandwidth, according to Executive Officer and Officer of Chief Support for the Nassau County Police Department, Ed Horace.
U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer announced on Feb. 27 that $651,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was obtained to provide 70 Nassau County Fire Departments and Volunteer Ambulance Corps with the new radio equipment. Horace also gave credit to Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano for helping to obtain the grant money.
The Nassau County Police Department applied for the grant last spring, Horace said. The new equipment will replace the 20-year-old system, and the amount of radio sites across the county will be increased from six to 24 radios to provide for more radio coverage. Without the grant, some of the costs endured by fire departments, to comply with the mandate, would have been passed on to county taxpayers.
The federal mandate, set to go into effect on January 1, 2013, requires that all emergency communications equipment operate on a new frequency that current communications equipment does not support. Additionally, the FCC will require all emergency communications to operate on a narrow-band frequency at 12.5 kHz efficiency.
Currently, all medical communications between NCPD’s Medical Control, local departments and VACs is conducted over a UHF frequency — an antiquated system, according to Schumer, that is plagued with static, interference and compatibility issues. The January frequency upgrade deadline is the result of an FCC effort to ensure more efficient use of limited radio frequency spectrum, due to crowding and to create greater spectrum access for public safety and non-public safety users.
