Emergency Radios Under Fire for Poor Emergency Performance

Despite the tens of millions of dollars that have been poured into emergency communication system upgrades after 9/11, emergency radios are still – in many cases – unable to handle the spike in communications that inherently occur during emergency situations.  Frustration with this reality is so widespread across the first responder community, that some towns have launched social media campaigns to implore Motorola – the primary manufacturer – to fix the issues.

Why Emergency Radios Tend to Fail When Needed Most

First and foremost, bottleneck issues are typically not caused by system crashes.  Rather, the problems are typically caused by inadequate capacity in the communication system to handle extreme spikes in communication “traffic.”  And this problem is exasperated by the fact that Motorola is moving away from analog and toward digital communication technology – believe it or not, the analog emergency radios at this point seem to be more reliable.

But over-stuffed communication channels are only part of the story; the other problem is that users are not being trained to use the new communication technology properly.  In fact, according to Motorola, user error is apparently the main problem.  As an example, repeated unsuccessful attempts to use emergency radios when traffic is at a peak only serves to increase the bottleneck.

In my estimation, both of these issues contribute to the problem.  Motorola is introducing next-gen emergency radios that first responders are not properly trained on, and this lack of training often leads to actions that can make a bottleneck situation even worse.  So as is usually the case, it is all about the preparation and the training.  Hopefully, this situation will improve as time goes on and people adapt to the new technology.