Americans are far from being desensitized to homeland terror alerts, says MSNBC’s Jesse Ventura. The most recent concern he investigates on his “Homeland Terror Watch” is the ability of emergency responders to communicate with each other.
BOB, A VIEWER from Georgia, says New York fire and police workers could not pass information to save lives in the World Trade Center. He says the problem has been evident for several years, and especially so since 9/11. Indeed, Ventura says that the rescue effort on 9/11 was pure chaos. “Antennas failed, walkie-talkies jammed, signals couldn’t get through. Most warnings were never heard. Cops were communicating on one radio frequency while firefighters were on another. If only those heroes could talk to each other,” he says.
To find an example of the latest efforts in emergency communication, Ventura looked to San Diego, where they have made emergency communication a priority. “We have the ability to speak to law enforcement on many different levels,” says Capt. Jim Raines, with the city’s Fire Communications. “Since September 11, it has brought about an awareness in the amount of drills and training and using those different types of channels. The ones that are set up for inter-agency use have been brought to the surface, and we’ve certainly had a lot more practice with that to make us more capable.”
“It’s not for me to say that if New York had a system like San Diego’s, more lives could have been spared,” notes Ventura. “But I do think every major city should learn from what happened that awful day in New York.”
Other cities are dealing with the problem as well. Just last month, the city of Seattle held a terror drill involving a dirty bomb. Afterward, police officials acknowledged that their communication capacity is “always limited.”
According to Ventura, it would cost about $500 million to update the communications system for a big city like New York, about the same as it would cost to build a new sports stadium. “What’s more important?” he asks. “The safety of our hero cops and firefighters, or a new football stadium? Let’s put our tax money toward what really matters.”
You can e-mail Jesse Ventura with your homeland security concerns at his homepage. Click here.