The tragic West fertilizer explosion on April 17, 2013, drove home the point that local emergency responders need to operate from the same wavelength when dealing with everything from major disasters to grass fires. A communications system that does not allow the right hand to know what the left hand is doing poorly serves those attempting to save time and lives.
Fortunately, much has changed since then. Police, fire and other emergency personnel around McLennan County work from an 800 megahertz system accessible to all. It is powered by seven towers, the county having spent $5.5 million in recent years to install four more and improve coverage.
Officials said the unified capabilities will serve Central Texas well on April 8, when a total eclipse is expected to bring scores of visitors to McLennan County, possibly creating traffic jams, bottlenecks and flared tempers.
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“The state is coming up with a communications plan, asking jurisdictions to put certain talk groups on their radio systems throughout the eclipse corridor,” said Frank Patterson, director of emergency and risk management at McLennan Community College. “You can drive from one end of the state to the other, never having to change frequencies. If we ever have something big, and we will, this will pay dividends in terms of first responder safety.”
At the time of the 2013 West explosion, Patterson was director of the Waco-McLennan County Office of Emergency Management.
“The problem became very apparent during the explosion at West, when people were coming in from all over the place,” Patterson said.
Radio system shortcomings forced Patterson to put the varied first responders on speaking terms, patching one to another throughout the dark hours.
He said the county’s $5.5 million and other funds pulled from local, state and national sources “have been a great investment in public safety.”
County Judge Scott Felton, who took office in 2012, said the West explosion a year later spurred his resolve to make radio interoperability a priority, something for which others, including Patterson, had lobbied.
“Communications got jammed up. Everybody had different paths to communicate in. Towers jammed,” Felton said. “Frank Patterson and I agreed during the following days that we should not forget things we need to improve on. We began talking to other agencies, pursuing grants, partnering with Waco primarily through emergency management. There were lots of coverage areas around the county that became apparent. We dedicated ourselves to getting as many problems solved as we could.”
He said Motorola offered a solution the county found irresistible, the communications giant practically guaranteeing it could mitigate the mess.
“With their fix, moving a few towers around and modernizing equipment, we could get at least 95% coverage. We just completed a review, and it may be closer to 96% to 97%,” said Felton, referring to radio access countywide.
Using federal American Rescue Plan Act money, the county made hand-held Motorola radios available to all volunteer fire departments countywide, giving members access to give-and-take on the 800 Mhz system.
“Many times rural fire departments are first on the scene, so it is just as important they can communicate with responders,” Felton said.
Municipal boundaries melt away in critical situations, said Ryan Holt, who joined the Waco Police Department as a recruit in 1996, became police chief in 2016 and now serves as a Waco assistant city manager.
“Emergencies don’t care about city limits,” Holt said.
He said coordination has come a long way since he started.
“I can remember the ’90s and 2000s, when you could only talk to other Waco police officers, or if you were in the Woodway system, you could only talk to Woodway officers,” Holt said. “Now we think much more globally, how we communicate with fire, EMS and other emergency responders.
“Essentially, the city has owned the radio core, three towers, and the county has added a number of additional towers to create more coverage and to increase the robustness of the system.”
Patterson said persuading communities to join the 800 Mhz system sometimes proved challenging. They were satisfied with the systems they had, until those systems broke down or proved ineffective, he said.
“Hewitt said early on they would like to try our system, so we loaned them hand-held radios and said, ‘If they work for you, great,'” Patterson said. “Chief Devlin saw how well the system worked at a pretty big grass fire, and with things happening on the interstate. The final piece was building out the rest of the county.”
Jim Devlin, now a Hewitt assistant city manager, was succeeded last year as the city’s police chief by John McGrath.
Beyond the agencies one might expect to have 800 Mhz access, officials say other participants include Baylor University, MCC, state and federal agencies, school districts and medical facilities. Patterson said radio communication is possible between McLennan County first responders and those in Hill and Bell counties, which have implemented the 800 Mhz radio system.
The West explosion killed 15 people, injured hundreds, and damaged hundreds of homes. It may have been the catalyst for change, but planning began years earlier for a unified system to replace mismatched UHF and VHF processes. The city of Waco alone had an 800 Mhz system powered by a single tower in the middle of the Heart O’ Texas Fairgrounds, as the complex then was called.
Consultants the Heart of Texas Council of Governments summoned to Central Texas determined an 800 Mhz was the best for all concerned, in Waco and beyond.
“That’s what the industry was moving to, and what the consultants said was best for us when they were vetted,” Patterson said. “That’s what we continued to use. We did make the transition from analog to digital, a move driven by the FCC, which said we had to do some upgrades.”
Waco used Homeland Security funds to build Patterson a radio shop, “which had become a passion of mine,” but its functions were assumed by two such shops: the city’s in the former police and courts building at Fourth Street and Waco Drive, the county’s near its jail on State Highway 6.
Participants in the 800 Mhz system keep it operating with payments based on the number of radios each has in use.
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