 |
Public
Information
Officer Dave
Zaski (left) and
Thomas Cravener
lead training on
RadioSTAT
Portable
Emergency
Advisory
equipment at
North Tahoe (CA)
Fire Protection
District. |
|
 |
Lake Tahoe area
and surrounding
roadways. The
North Tahoe Fire
Protection
District is
responsible for
areas generally
north and west
of the Lake. |
|
Lake Tahoe California
Emergency Management |
December 2010 |
Taking It Straight to the Public: Portable Radio
Stations to Broadcast Lake Tahoe Area Emergency Info |
When
emergencies happen in the communities joined by the
necklace of roads adorning Lake Tahoe, the results can
be anything but charming. Motorists approaching an
incident can be sandwiched between traffic gridlock,
steep cliffs and the shoreline, unable to turn around or
even reach a detour or evacuation route.
“What prompted our Chief to want to utilize this kind of
system in the first place, were two large fires in the
Lake Tahoe area. One was in our district that traveled
rapidly from a residential area into the wildland. We
have a two lane highway around the lake. We have one
feeder route into and out of Tahoe City. Predictably, at
the "Y" there was a traffic jam. The phones were ringing
off the hook at our local fire station to where it
became undoable to answer all the questions,” recalls
Chris Stulik, assistant to the North Tahoe District's
public information officer. “The transmitters would have
been an excellent way of helping to inform people to
keep out of the area and to call the emergency number
for updates.”
The North Tahoe Fire Protection District has recently
included two of the
RadioSTAT transmitters as standard equipment on
their Public Information Trailers, for quick deployment
when and where needed.
“We anticipate avalanche situations and road closures
due to floods that we often see here in the mountains.
We have a very huge influx of tourists during the summer
and the RadioSTAT transmitters will be an invaluable
tool to help maintain continuity during any kind of an
emergency in managing people and traffic and providing
them current and valid information by directing them
toward other initial assistance.
Recently,” adds Stulik, “there was a smoke incident at a
local elementary school. Everyone is just fine and the
emergency was handled very well. If something like that
had escalated, Chief Whitelaw of North Tahoe Fire loves
the idea of being able to address the parents by
broadcasting to them locally, where to pick up their
children.”
The challenges of this environment are shared by all
public agencies in the area, and so the District is
making the RadioSTAT units available on an inter-agency
basis. The Placer County Sheriffs Department has been
drilled on their use and deployment, along with Citizen
team leaders, the Red Cross, neighboring fire agencies
and even the local Airport authority. “It is being
viewed as a mutual asset in time of need because of our
remote position in the mountains,” says Stulik. “The two
lane highway around the entire lake - and routing out of
here - demands quick response and very accurate
logistics in evacuating people to shelters during an
emergency event.”
“This trend among agencies of emergency management, as
well as public health, police, fire, and federal
agencies such as USDA, (US Department of Agriculture),
BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and the National Park
Service to employ this technology continues to gain
momentum,” asserts Bill Baker, spokesman for “AAIRO,”
a national association of station operators. Baker
states that the FCC/NTIA (Federal Communications
Commission/National Telecommunications & Information
Administration) databases currently list more than a
thousand such stations operating in all 50 states. |
Related Links
Portable Emergency Advisory
Radio Stations
Alert Stations
across America, State by State
Why Customers Say
They Buy Information Radio Stations |
|
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Inc. • All Rights Reserved
PO Box 51, Zeeland, Michigan, USA, 49464-0051, Phone
616.772.2300, Fax 616.772.2966,
Email the Editor
• • •
|
Information Radio Stations is a generic term
synonymous with Travelers Information Stations (TIS), Highway
Advisory Radio Stations (HAR) / Highway Information Systems &
Low Power Radio Stations (LPR). Operation of the stations is
governed by FCC Part 90.242 Rules. A FCC license is required.
Information Radio Stations may be fixed or portable.
Subcomponents may include transmitter, antenna and ground
system, digital voice player, wattmeter, cabinet with
conventional or Corbin locks, lightning arrestors for RF, power
and telephone lines, coaxial cable. Most stations employ black
maximized antennas to discourage ice accumulation and security
measures to prevent unauthorized program access. Options include
synchronization, battery backup, solar power, remote programming
by local, network or telco, multi-station audio distribution via
RF or LAN / WAN or wireless network. |