Tulsa's new Homeland Security trailer

In emergency situations, communications are key, but did you know that different police departments sometimes can't talk to each other. In fact, that's the case more often than not. Fortunately,

Tuesday, June 7th 2005, 10:02 am

By: News On 6

In emergency situations, communications are key, but did you know that different police departments sometimes can't talk to each other. In fact, that's the case more often than not. Fortunately, the city of Tulsa now has an emergency communications trailer that was bought with Homeland Security money.

As News on 6 reporter Steve Berg explains, it works like an interpreter between different radio systems.

On manhunts, police first need to locate each other and with disasters, the communications can wind up a mess too. Echo One project manager, John Geddie: "What happened is you have everybody on different frequencies or bandwidths and they'd show up and they couldn't communicate with each other. I think on the I-40 bridge where it collapsed. I believe the barge hit it, multiple agencies responded, they couldn't communicate and there was chaos at the beginning.â€

John Geddie is the Project Manager for Echo One, the city of Tulsa's emergency communications trailer. Fully mobile, they can be up and running in under an hour. The real trick though is that they can link together any of the dozens of different radio systems being used by police and fire and other emergency personnel in Oklahoma.

They can tie in something as high-tech as a satellite phone or as mundane as a home walkie-talkie. Compatibility is just one part of the equation though. They can also provide communications where no infrastructure exists or if the infrastructure gets wiped out. "If the city of Tulsa ever loses one or two of its tower sites, we lose communications. Echo One can respond and we can raise the tower and we can supply the city of Tulsa with the critical communications that they need."

Of course you wouldn't want to send the trailer to a disaster site unless it can stand up to the disaster, so they have stabilizer arms and up above, they can extend guy wires from the tower. Between the two, it can stand up to 100 mile per hour winds.

From tornadoes to terrorists, they say this will keep people talking. Talk isn't cheap, the trailer costs about half-a-million dollars.