Disaster communications: Lessons from 9/11

need more than one way to communicate with each other and with people directly on the scene. When one system gets cut off or stops working properly, there must be other options.

Constructing resilience
In our work with Ohio’s FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team, Task Force 1, we have multiple communication methods. Mainly we use a national wireless network – which itself is designed to be resilient in emergencies, with redundant network connections and switching equipment and round-the-clock system monitoring. The company can also bring in portable cellular towers when regular cell towers are disabled, or to improve coverage in an area where existing service is overloaded.

We have wireless service for the bus that serves as our mobile operations center, and for cell phones and tablets issued to our task force leaders. The bus also has a Wi-Fi system that can connect additional devices.

If the cellular network is severely compromised by the disaster, we can use satellites. MSAT devices carry our voice traffic, and our data travels via portable BGAN terminals, which connect to laptop computers.

Our base of operations (BoO) at a disaster is equipped with a 1.8-meter VSAT satellite dish that can provide data and internet access for all the responders in the area. As further backup, we have portable radios and a repeater system.

What we communicate about
Another communications lesson from 9/11 comes from something that, tragically, didn’t happen. That day, New York hospitals called in all available staff, to be ready to receive large numbers of patients. They worried, as did we, in our makeshift clinic just north of the twin towers, that thousands of people would need lifesaving care all at the same time.

Yet there was no way to know which hospitals were full, which ones had operating rooms available or anything else about where to send patients, had they arrived in large numbers. Some hospitals likely would have been beyond overwhelmed, while others nearby might have had plenty of space and available doctors and nurses standing ready.

The lesson has spread across the country. Columbus, Ohio, where we work now, uses a system called “Real Time Activity Status,” which connects all the hospitals in our own Franklin County and three neighboring counties. It notifies ambulance dispatchers when their emergency rooms are too busy and need to divert patients to other hospitals. A similar system saved many lives after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

By ensuring that – no matter what happens – we can communicate with each other, the emergency response community keeps the memory of 9/11 alive in our own way every single day.

Thomas Terndrup is Professor of Emergency Medicine, The Ohio State University. Nicholas Kman is Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, The Ohio State University. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution / No derivative).