One traffic-filled Friday night in Cameron, MO, a loaded tractor-trailer failed to yield at an intersection, rearended two cars and flipped onto its side, blocking both lanes of a busy westbound highway and closing off the shoulder as well.

Four people in the two cars had injuries and needed an ambulance. Police had nowhere to reroute traffic, and they worried about more secondary accidents happening as a back-up began to build.

Police Chief L. Corey Sloan had one big advantage, though: he could communicate on the same radio frequency with all emergency responders, including tow truck drivers from Scotty’s Carriage Works, Inc., a Cameronbased company. Before towers even arrived on the scene, they knew exactly what the police needed to upright the tractor-trailer, move away all the wreckage, and re-open the highway.

In less than an hour from the time the initial 911 call came in — 56 minutes, to be precise — the accident scene was completely cleared. “Scotty’s knew what to expect, what equipment we needed, and where we needed them to be,” Sloan said. “Our main goal is to protect the public and make a scene safe as quickly as possible, and good communication is absolutely essential to doing that.”

Seamless & Safe
Mike Scott, the owner of Scotty’s Carriage Works, agreed: “I can radio as I’m coming up to a scene, and they can tell me which vehicle they need me to move first — or if I need to turn around and back into an area in a certain way. Or if I’m on my way on a road that has a hill or a curve, somebody ahead of me can tell me exactly when I’ll come upon the accident. The information comes to me instantly.”

Developing such seamless communication takes both money and time, but as the 56-minute clear time for a major accident shows, the payoffs can be huge, according to Sloan, Scott, and other first responders in Cameron. Much of the capital cost is for beefedup radio systems that allow all emergency personnel to talk on each other’s radio frequencies en route to and on a scene.

Traditionally, responders have used two-way radios that broadcast on different frequency bands, requiring each agency to call their own dispatch center and have that dispatch call another agency’s dispatch to relay information back to a scene. Over the past five years, Cameron’s police department has invested about $250,000 in federal Homeland Security grants in new portable radios, consoles, and voice-over Internet Protocol that can patch together different agencies’ radio systems for voice and data transmission. Getting in touch is as simple as switching a channel and pushing a button to talk, a system that required minimal training for responders to operate.

Needed Now
The city uses Raytheon’s ACU-M system, which has four audio ports for radios, two Internet channels, and a headset port that can interconnect radios in any band, including HF, VHF, UHF, P25, 800 MHz, and Nextel iDEN phones. The fire department, meanwhile, last year used another $48,000 grant for 15 handheld radios that allow for wireless communication.

On the towing side, companies need radio systems capable of operating on multiple channels, Scott said. He believes the time to push that idea is now, because companies already are deciding what new equipment they need to comply with a Federal Communications Commission mandate that calls for emergency responders to switch from wide-band to narrow band-compliant radios by 2013. For a little more money — about $100 on a radio unit that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars — tow companies would have the capacity to add many more channels, Scott said.

But before companies are likely to spend that additional money, he added, they need to feel like interoperability is possible. And that means changing resistance from some Traffic Incident Management circles — police, fire and EMS agencies — about having towers on their same radio bands, as well as changing legislation in states that don’t classify tow trucks as emergency vehicles.

“There often is still a lack of trust and fear that the system would be abused, by wreck chasers or by people getting on the frequency when it’s not an emergency,” Scott said. “My feeling is that we’re all trying to work toward the same goal, so why wouldn’t we want to work together?”

Reduced Risk
Interoperability also can reduce the risk of injury for all emergency responders at an incident, Scott pointed out, echoing the view of the Towing & Recovery Association of America (TRAA). “The faster we clear a scene, the quicker we’re all off a road and the less danger everyone is exposed to,” he said. Sloan, for one, has a hard time understanding the continued resistance. “That’s an antiquated way of thinking,” he said. “With the economy the way it is and the dwindling personnel for public safety, we need public-private partnerships to accomplish our missions. If we can save more lives and get people the help they need more quickly, we should be doing this all across the country.”

Building a required trust level is where time, not money, is critical, say Sloan and Mike O’Donnell, fire chief for the city of Cameron. Towers in Cameron and surrounding areas regularly come to a variety of training sessions and committee meetings with emergency responders, from preevent planning to debriefings after accidents, hazardous material spills, and natural disasters. They also share ideas in more informal settings, such as over lunch or a cup of coffee. “That way we have a long-term working relationship before we are responding to an incident,” O’Donnell said. “That allows us to work together better and assist each other.” Adds Sloan: “We’re not perfect — we have our little spats like any other place. But we are able to work out any disagreements and pull together and do a better job for the public.”

We’ve Got It!
Cameron’s police and fire leaders recognize that towers offer equipment and expertise they may not have, such as low-pressure airbags to help extricate victims, know-how on the newest vehicle models and the big wreckers that can stabilize trucks, move vehicles in precise ways, and remove them from tricky spots such as ditches or gullies. During a roadway hazardous material spill in 2010, for example, good communication allowed towers to quickly reach several tractor-trailers that had gotten stuck trying to turn around in the median or detour onto a back gravel road.

Interoperability via radio is perhaps most critical in major emergencies, when cell phone service has a good chance of failing, Scott said. With a serious traffic accident or natural disaster such as a flood, tornado, or hurricane, cell-phone towers often can’t handle the flood of calls and then shut down. “People are trying to call loved ones or trying to figure out what’s going on or call for help,” he said. “That’s when you really need to get first responders to where they need to be, and in my experience you just can’t count on cell service to be reliable.”

In addition to saving lives, interoperability can simply make everyone’s life easier. Consider this: for every minute that a freeway travel lane is blocked during peak traffic — like that Friday night in Cameron — drivers face four minutes of travel delay after an incident clears, according to the National Traffic Incident Management Coalition, which is behind an effort to improve responder communication and safety. TRAA is a partner in that effort.

“Our goal is to make things happen faster, smoother, and safer,” Sloan said. “We need a team of people to do that — and I can’t imagine our team without the towers.”