two experienced first responders assess the progress the u.s. has made in emergency communications since 9/11 and what they see as remaining shortcomings in the emergency public safety communications.

>> one of the major policy issues that came out of 9/11 is the interoperable the or the lack thereof of the emergency communications. that's the topic this week on the communicators and the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is now upon us. jack brown as the director of emergency management services in arlington county virginia. if you would tell us first of all your experience tells 9/11 and then to the conversation with the ability of your emergency communications. >> yes, sir. on 9/11 i was the assistant fire rescue chief in virginia. i had retired about five years earlier from fairfax county or i was almost 30 years of fire and rescue department there. on 9/11, all of the area fire and rescue departments participated in one way or another at the event of the pentagon. either by responding to the scene at the request of the arlington fire department or

filling in their stations or in the afternoon of 9/11 firefighters and myself were assigned to one of the fire stations and we were subsequently asked to come down to the site and work for the assistant chief schwartz of the time, now a five-year chief, and i became the planning section chief. in the command system working with chief schwartz developing the action plans and working with logistics and doing a lot of the support that needed to be done. >> as 9/11 was on full and particularly of the pentagon, what was the ability of the fire department from the arlington county fire department, the pentagon police etc to communicate with each other? >> between fire and rescue, it wasn't as difficult for us and arlington county because we recently switched over to the 18 megahertz and we brought the

radios down to the site and passed them out but certainly it was a challenge with some of the other departments that responded to the scene. >> has it improved in the last ten years? >> overall it has improved especially in the fire and rescue to the limited extent with law enforcement. but the 800 megahertz frequencies to communicate much better than we could on 9/11. but i look at the interval for the the the as more than just a radio. so a lot of our protocols are the way we fight fires flexible and to handle certain incidents particularly in northern virginia the fire and rescue the french operate on the same playbook >> also joining us is harlin mcewen of the international association of chiefs of police. chief mcewen, how would you describe the status of the emergency communications in the u.s. today? >> welcome if you want to start with the 9/11, 2001, it was not

as good as it is today. so things have improved i think in the last ten years fairly significantly. the issue of interoperable the. i've been working in this arena for many years. it isn't something that all of a sudden came upon 9/11. it's something we've been trained to address for many years so 9/11 put a focus on it. people started to realize was a serious problem and needed to be addressed and lead to significant improvement has been made in the last ten years. >> the tenth anniversary report of the 9/11 commission came out recently, and one of the hour original things they would have done is to improve the interoperable the, the d blocks spectrum sale devoted to public safety and this is what they write in the tenth anniversary report. the inability of the first

responders to communicate with each other on demand was a critical failure on 9/11. to date, their recommendation continues to languish and they go on to say that we support in the immediate allocation of the dunlop spectrum to public safety and the construction of the opera ball broadband networks do you agree? >> that has been our goal for a long time. we've been developing plans for that for many, many years. actually starting before 9/11 as i said we were very encouraged when of the 9/11 commissioner committee recommended that back in the original report. what's disappointing is that today, you know, six or seven years after their reports and ten years after the terrible event of 9/11 the converse is still to act on that issue and

that's very disappointing. >> of the republican congress by the energy and commerce committee has passed a bill promoting spectrum auctions and it doesn't include the d block. >> i'm not quite sure what use it is correct. in other words they are addressing the issue of the spectrum options and the whole thing. unfortunately, the majority of the committee are not in favor of allocating 50 blocked the public safety. the republican minority has supported that and i think the more encouraging actions that is taking place in the senate where the bipartisan support from senator rockefeller and senator hutchison as the ranking minority member actually proposes a solution that we strongly support. jack brown, do you agree with the necessity of the d block?

kimmage yes i do. our biggest concern with public safety is reliability and we feel the public safety community should have control and be able to set it up and not necessarily have to depend on outside carriers. estimate also join in on the communicators is the homeland security reporter for congressional quarterly two. everybody seems to think it's a good idea to have the interoperable communications. looking at why congress hasn't done this i'm asking you to explain what are the obstacles, what are the problems, why hasn't this happened yet? >> i will tell you my view and that is there are people who believe there are different ways of approaching the solution in the way the public safety believes so we are growing

bipartisan support build in the house and in the senate to support what we believe is the right solution and that is basically the language that is in 9/11, but at the same time it is not unusual in congress to have their own opinions and be sure they know the people affected so that this kind of where we are. i can't tell you why they are supporting it, but it's disappointing to say the least. >> you have a cause for optimism that this is something in the results and if so, why? >> if i didn't i wouldn't have stayed with it for many years as i have because i am approaching really a fair retirement place in my life and i've stayed with this because i think it's so important and i've had such a central role in the discussions from the very beginning so i am

optimistic. we were disappointed that the senate bill didn't get moved down to the floor they have really taken over everything. >> and on the deficit discussions? >> that was a little bit alarming to us because if you look at what came up it became a partisan issue and that was something we didn't like. we would rather have both parties looking at this objectively and working with us to solve the problem. >> talk about the practical effect of not having this if there was a discussion about the importance of the data em herber ability because they think of 9/11 and the fact that the police and firefighters couldn't talk to one another in new york

city stat the data is so critically important the police departments need to be what to communicate among each other, information about suspects and subjects and also some things and that was taking water from the spectrum and the fire departments also for the medical information to the hospitals and doctors say it's all vitally important. i can go back to the recent earthquake we had last week. our communication systems cell phones, they were all down for a period of time it was at least an hour before the communication system started giving up and we do you sell phones and the radios and the cell phones and other mediums are interoperable. >> why did they go down last week or during the earthquake? >> part of it is the system got plugged. a lot of people were trying to

find out the system was overloaded. >> what was your experience with the earthquake in arlington county how did you communicate with the various emergency services? >> we did about radio. i would normally use my cell phone mauney emergency communications commander called me and got through to me within the first minute or 2i was not in the office with them wheat communicated and i had to actually go back to my office in my car but by the time i was in my vehicle there was a communications channel set up on the public safety radio systems we continue to communicate, but it just wasn't working for us. >> i just want to follow-up on tim's plight given that this is a multi jurisdictional area, chances are you probably want to communicate with alexandria or washington, d.c. or fairfax. were you able to do that as well? >> absolutely.

we have a phone system called the washington area alert system so we can communicate with each other and it's a secure system where you basically take up a telephone and you can speak over the net to all the capital jurisdictions including the federal government infected sexually hosted by the federal government so we do that. we have automated systems and a web based program that we use to enter data and the resource request for the practitioners out there so we do have other methods other than the typical telephones. we also have the radio operators and the base stations at every fire house as well as the office of emergency management so if everything goes down i have these great radio folks that, and they do stuff and the drill and exercise all the time and they love doing what they do and we just love having them. >> given the different systems

what is the d block dedicated to the public safety? >> i think that is the hard primary system and i think we needed for the use. the other sister lives talking about are the support systems if you will. we don't want to have to depend on the ham radio operators for the primary communications but if we have to, we will. i think we need a good reliable system. >> chief mcewen, when you hear about the systems is this different than it was ten years ago? is it enough? >> to go back to the question of a moment ago, the fact is that there are different approaches. but jack is talking about is the voice critical systems that are primarily voice systems. they don't have the bandwidth to do data so stuff that you do routinely on the smart phone or internet connection or what ever

you can't do that on these systems. they're focused on their mission critical voice so what we are trying to do is go to the next generation of the communications devices more like the smart phones and things of that nature and have our own a reliable spectrum. that's why the d block is so critical because if we have our own a spectrum, then the commercial networks get overloaded what happens is that we have our own dedicated spectrum where the public isn't overloading and we use it quickly for our purposes. you have to understand the difference of the two approaches. somewhere down the road in many years to come there probably will be the convergence of the two system but that degette isn't on the drawing board. >> psychiatry janet napolitano, homeland security, recently said there was an exercise not long ago the 60 major cities and that there was a really good opera

ability in that exercise and that scenario. how has progress been made without legislation? has it been money, policy changes, coordination? >> all free. a lot of money has been dedicated by the federal government over the last ten, 15 years to improving the interoperable the. and that has been a very positive success really. it's just the fact that it's a moving target. you are never really ever solve the total problem because of new equipment coming on line, new technology that isn't compatible with the old stuff so it's always going to be somewhat of a moving target. but the fact is that all of the grants for the last ten years have required a significant advancement towards interrupt a buddy. you just can't buy a new radio or a new system without showing that while you were doing that

you are also moving towards improving the problem and that is a very significant good thing to do is panic with the concerns about the government spending in congress, one of the areas the congress has began to cut back on is the state and local grants. how much does that affect things now and in the future as far as being able to keep moving us forward. islamic it's going to have a big negative impact because it's going to -- it takes significant ongoing system and funding to be able to keep the public safety communications operable and interoperable so in this which some people like to say we like to spend this amount of money and then it's your problem we have to tell them look, this is the responsibility of all levels of government. federal government having a big role in funding a lot of this it's a state responsibility and

it's a local responsibility everybody has to be a part of the solution. and if they don't start cutting back on these things which, you know, we understand in an economic and troubling time it's going to have a significant negative impact. >> what is your budget in arlington california for the budgets and how much of that comes from the federal government? >> it's about $6 million for the emergency communications center. however, we do depend on the federal government. this region gets about $58 million a year in the urban areas security funding split between the two states of maryland, virginia and washington, d.c.. i can't say or stress enough that the reduction on the elimination of the urban areas security initiative will have a very negative impact on moving any of the programs for word. it's about detection equipment,

biological, chemical, radiological detection equipment, it's about law enforcement information network exchange, personal protective equipment for firefighters and paramedics, planning, training and exercises, those types of things that have actually been enhanced to a tremendous degree since 9/11. our fear is some of those programs may suffer or have to be absorbed by the localities, and by understand that when we first started with the urban areas security initiative the intention was this would be seed money and states and localities would absorb the programs and equipment in the positions that go with it. however, with of a downturn in the economy the states and localities just are not able to do that to expect this is the c-span communicators program. this week we are looking at the emergency communications ten years after the terrorist attack of 9/11.

here is just a little about our guest. jack brown is the director of the office of emergency management in arlington county virginia red across the river from washington, d.c. previously the chief for the lowden county department of fire and rescue she also worked on her can katrina and served in operation iraqi freedom in baghdad where he got the bronze star and he has been dispatched to places such as taiwan or kenya in response to disasters. harlin mcewen is retired as fbi where he served as deputy assistant where he oversaw the criminal-justice information services such as the national crime information center and the integrated automated secure print identification system. he also served 20 says cheaters in effect under york and he began his career as a patrol officer and ten as the homeland

security reporter originally from evansville indiana congressional quarterly. next question mr. stark. >> yes, if you look it's difficult for congress because the police and firefighters and rescue personnel are a powerful constituency and it's ridiculous politically. i'm wondering how much the wireless carriers who also have their own spectrum have their own political weight to bring to bear, how much in the spectrum debate are the allies and how much are they the enemies? >> i think some of each. some of the major carriers are very supportive of the efforts because they had a video where it would be beneficial for the public community than to their

business interest for. of course we are very pleased with that and there are some in the commercial world that are looking at it that what we believe ms. moore selfishly to deal with their particular needs as a company and when that happens that is surprising to us. we have more support than we had detractors, and that's very helpful. >> i would never consider any of the public safety communications carriers as enemies. we are all partners. we may have differing views on how to get some place. they might have different voters but i think at the end of today we are all on the same page and we all want the good thing, good reliable communications.

>> when you hear the folks talk about let's increase the efficiency and perhaps use the white spaces in between the different areas what is your reaction to that? >> it's an interesting idea. certainly those places can be used more efficiently than they are being used now. the question for the public safety is is it a safe place for us to go in other words we have always been more comfortable with the idea of the allocation spectrum that is our spectrum that other people can't use or interfere with our so we would rather see that used for the public good and that let us continue to manage our own spectrum. >> back to the grants for a moment there was a "los angeles times" story talking about money being spent and pointed out

examples. how would you respond to that idea that this money isn't being restored wisely? do you think most of it is? how are you making sure that it's used well because it is an important part of whether they are going to cut the grants or not. estimate that the national level we don't really have any control over whether that is done locally. for the most part what we have observed is most of the money has been spent well. it's been in good standing. the problem is there are many programs that have it at some point and some have used mismanagement and of course what happens is it is disappointing to us and makes us look like we don't know what we are doing so it is disappointing but i think that we are all a majority of the money has been spent well and it's been given a good

result. >> when we spend the public's money there is a system in the process that we have to go through for especially grant funds, and the money is actually allocated to the states. we don't just get a check from the federal government. there are grants that we have in order to spend the money and to meet the criteria that's noted in the project management plan and if we fail to meet that in the locality of the state has to absorb that cost so we are very careful and i think that is a system of checks and balances to at least prevent wasteful spending. >> any estimate of how much as been spent in the past 20 years on improving emergency communications? >> that is somewhat debatable. there are people some have put all the money that's been spent on the various kind of programs together.

generally speaking we believe the fight for $10 billion has been allocated by the federal government, and for the most part has been spent well. people are on the hill that have reached some comments that it's much more than that and most of it has been wasted and we find that very disappointing because we don't believe that that is true. >> this is somewhat different to the communications question one of the big reactions in d.c. was we couldn't use our phone. i'm wondering how much as the public safety agencies used and on communicating with the public and getting them to communicate with you and those kind of things. >> we spend a tremendous amount of time and money communicating with the public. in the office of emergency management that is our main objective is to communicate with the public. we are not the police officers or firefighters, we are more the facilitators and the coordinators and like i tell the

stuff all the time the public doesn't care that i have my emergency operations open. what they want is information to read and we have various communications platform at arlington county for the system we have a warning and an a.m. radio station what is called arlington alert which is a messaging system that goes out through e-mail, salles phone, pager so we are also using the social media, trigger and facebook to get information back. there are some technically savvy folks in the office to dribble to get the information coming from the community and come in and get back especially during the earthquake and hurricane we had a lot of questions from the communique to the coke community of there because they were feeding disinformation about the downed power lines and trees and things like that, but before they would have had to call our communications center which could be overloaded with phone calls for the emergency line which can get pretty jammed up.

>> i asked last week for a separate story, and she was concerned first for this program for how well not the self one component of the private people but the actual disaster communication networks set up in the agency's worked for hurricane irene. >> the systems we had in use which was the web based program, the washington area warning alert system from the radio, the phone worked fine during the hurricane. we had no issues with that. so in the washington metropolitan area i do realize that d.c. and some communities in maryland suffered a lot of damage and in northern virginia only a perfect we didn't get nearly the damage from the hurricane that other localities did so we communicated just

fine. >> just to tie this up, ten years ago was 9/11. jack brown if such an event occurred today when you are watching how the communication system be different? >> we would certainly communicate to the public with the need to do. that is what they're looking to us to do is provide the information how they can keep their families safe and the message we tried to get across everyday's to be prepared to make sure that u.s. supplies of food, water, medicine, other necessities to stay home, to stay put christie at your office for a pleased three days. one of the challenges on the 9/11 was the area was attempting to evacuate. we don't do that very well during rush hour. we really don't, so a lot of washington, d.c. is very problematic. so we need to change the mind set. not just in the emergency

management professionals but of the community. you really need to take care of yourselves and your families, make sure you have those plans. mcgeorge you have saved that your schools are going to keep your kids safe, and understand something like a terrorist attack they could potentially be locked down and you may not able to get to them not to mention we don't want people out there on the highways in peking first responders and supplies coming into an emergency strike. so those are the kind of takeaways the we got from 9/11, just a few of them. >> chief harlin mcewen come if that were to happen again today but, are we prepared, are different cities prepared at different levels? >> there's no question the of different levels of preparedness, but again, i have to continue to say that we are far better off today than we were ten years ago. we had this goal of dramatically