Thursday, July 22, 1999
Dowlin asks about portable cell-phone towers
BY DAN KLEPAL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The April 9 tornado that killed four people in Hamilton County had one thing in common with the massacre at a Colorado high school 12 days later: emergency personnel couldn't communicate with one another immediately after the tragedies.
But that quickly changed in Littleton, Colo., thanks to a cellular phone company.
U S West brought in a portable cell-phone tower and handed out 300 digital phones to emergency workers after the shootings at Columbine High School, allowing police and rescue workers from 30 agencies to talk and coordinate their movements.
There was no such luck in Southwest Ohio April 9, when radio channels and cellular phones were caught in gridlock, forcing emergency workers to hand-deliver messages from the communication center to the field.
County Commissioner John Dowlin told a commission meeting Wednesday that the sheriff of Jefferson County, Colo., made a presentation at a conference in St. Louis last weekend about the communication problems.
Mr. Dowlin asked county staff to see if portable cell-phone antennas could help the next time a disaster happens in the Cincinnati area.
“In our tornado, we couldn't communicate either,” Mr. Dowlin said. “My question is, can't we get our providers to do the same thing? And if that is necessary, or highly desirable, how do we get there?”
Steve Davis, public information officer for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, said the influx of media, emergency personnel and students in the school with cell phones made communication nearly impossible.
The portable antenna was brought in on a trailer and installed in about four hours, he said.
“That unit helped immediately,” Mr. Davis said, adding that Jefferson County — like Hamilton County — does not yet have an 800-megahertz communication system that would solve the communication breakdowns.
Greg Wenz, operations director at the Hamilton County Communication Center, said portable sites can add capacity to overloaded towers.
“You've got to take your hat off to U S West,” Mr. Wenz said. “That was a great public service.”
Communications Center Director Bill Hinkle said the issue would be discussed at the next Emergency Council meeting.
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