County emergency radios switch to narrow band

Whitman County emergency communicators switched on to new radio signals Monday. Steve Krigbaum, Whitman County’s emergency communications coordinator, said the first run of the new signals was successful.

“Our test pages went out to fire departments last night and nobody called to say they didn’t get their page,” Krigbaum said Tuesday.

To meet mandates from the Federal Communications Commission, emergency radio traffic switched from a wideband signal to a narrow band.

Krigbaum said the switch is a big deal, though it may not grab anybody’s attention.

“The general consensus is it was a non-event. Nobody even noticed we did it,” said Krigbaum. “And in this business, that’s exactly what you want - you don’t want to be noticed.”

In an effort to free up radio waves, the FCC has required all agencies switch to narrow band radio transmissions by Jan. 1, 2013.

“The FCC did dump an unfair burden on the citizens of Whitman County and every other rural county,” said Krigbaum.

He said breaking in the new band a year and a half ahead of schedule saved the county’s firefighters, police and EMTs lots of money and worry.

“We got through it relatively unscathed because we started planning for this a couple of years ago,” said Krigbaum.

Over the past two years, Krigbaum has been working with those emergency crews to tune every radio in the county into the new signal.

Together, all the fire, EMT and police departments own more than 1,000 radios, none of which are the same make or model.

“It’s an amazing hodgepodge,” said Krigbaum.

He credited the departments for working together to free up time and resources to make the re-programming go smoothly.

“Every small fire department and police agency gets a lot of credit for working together as a team to come together and get this done:”

Had the switch been made later, said Krigbaum, the county would have had to likely pay more for programming and equipment as demand for technology and expertise will increase as the deadline nears.

If departments do not switch to narrow band by 2013, the FCC has announced it will pull their radio licenses and fine them for transmitting on those signals.

Cost of the transition was primarily Krigbaum’s time, as he traveled to each department and re-programmed radios.