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Birmingham's City Hall |
| Sweet
Signal in Alabama |
| Downtown
Birmingham Home to the Nation's
Highest Emergency / Health Information Radio Antenna |
 BIRMINGHAM,
AL: The pandemic is not even in our rear view mirror
yet, and now approaches the potential for severe power,
communication and supply chain disruption that could
result from a cyberattack. Greg Silas, Director of the
Birmingham’s Emergency Communication District, is
utilizing every tool at his disposal to be ready to keep
citizens informed should that happen. One such tool is
an Emergency Information Radio Station with arguably the
largest footprint of any in the United States. On March
8th his district was granted permission by the FCC to
operate the station’s transmitting antenna fulltime from
atop Birmingham City Hall. The placement allows the
antenna to top out at 229 feet – more than four times
higher above the ground than rules normally permit. |
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Downtown Birmingham has enhanced radio signal
coverage
from its new Emergency Information Radio Station on 1650
AM. |
The
special rule waiver also allows the city’s emergency
information signal to be heard over a reception area six
times larger than what is normally permitted: the
city-grade (2.0 mV/m) signal will encompass 17 square
miles, which will push out their primary grade (0.5
mV/m) signal to blanket nearly 150 square miles of
Alabama heartland.
The enhanced signal is possible due to the newly
available
HPR.0990 Radio Antenna, which is many times more
efficient than conventional antennas in its design
class. The service, along with a solar-powered version
with a portable changeable message sign, was used to
provide directional and procedural information in
association with local COVID clinics during the height
of the health emergency. |
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Midland
ER10VP
Emergency Radio Receiver |
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The result is a communication tool that the
Birmingham community can utilize when a major disruption
of any kind occurs. The city 911 center is backed up by
generator power, and virtually everyone has access to an
AM radio receiver with battery: those in cars use the
vehicle battery as a backup; people without vehicles can
use portable battery-operated receivers such as the
Midland ER10VP (AM / FM / NWS). The
receiver is sensitive enough to pick up a wide range of
AM / FM signals and can trigger on NOAA alerts as well.
Special discounts are available on this receiver model
from Information Station Specialists currently. Special
discounts are available from Information Station
Specialists for multiple purchases.
Email for a quote. |
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Other communities recently granted rule waivers for
increased height and/or signal intensity for their
emergency AM stations: Beverly Hills, CA, Lincoln
County, ME.*
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Emergency Studios at WLW in Cincinnati, OH. “The
Big One” runs 50,000 watts
on AM 700 and is one of the “modernized stations” in the
National Public Warning System. |
High Powered AM-band radio broadcast stations have been
predominantly selected by FEMA to be the backbone of the
National Public Warning System (NPWS) due to their
massive geographic reach and the universality of the AM
radio receiver. The 77 AM and FM radio stations in the
NPWS system cover more than 90% of the US population and
are in the process of upgrading their resiliency should
a presidential alert be required. Emergency Information
Stations similar to Birmingham’s operate at just a
fraction of the wattage of a NPWS station but share some
of the signal propagation characteristics afforded by AM
methodology.
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(*) Communities that have received license waivers for increased
signal and/or antenna height include:
Auburn, WA
Aurora, IL
Avon Grove Regional Emergency Management, PA
Bainbridge Island, WA
Ohio DOT (Geneva, OH)
Foresthill, CA
Longmont, CO
Lago Vista, TX
Mentor, OH
Peabody, MA
Portola Valley, CA
Twenty other locations are pending at this time. |
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| Portable AM Radio
Stations Prep to Deploy Statewide in Illinois |
| Mutual Aid Group Adds
Six Portable RadioSTAT Systems and LED Signs to its
Communications Arsenal |
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Urbana, IL:
Formed after the 9/11 attacks, The Illinois Law
Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) is a Public Agency of
the State of Illinois created by various local law
enforcement agencies pursuant to the Intergovernmental
Cooperation Act. ILEAS coordinates mutual aid -
training, interoperability and emergency response
resources - for more than 900 local government agencies
in the state. It’s the largest such entity in the US.
This spring ILEAS is bolstering its capabilities with
the addition of six portable
RadioSTAT emergency radio stations and LED sign
systems for assignment to major incidents. The new
resources will be staged regionally throughout Illinois
for rapid roll out. |
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| A
Communications Exercise Coordinated by ILEAS |
| Spokesman Bill
Springer tells The Source “There are lots of
scenarios where we need to get critical information to
the public and there is no other way to do it.” Springer
explains that it is not uncommon that the incident
itself (tornado, earthquake, etc.) will take down the
very communication infrastructure that public safety
agencies would normally leverage to push out
information, such as the locations of relief supplies
and shelter. |
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Sometimes
cellular capacities are overloaded in the vicinity of
incidents as drivers seek directional assistance when
encountering flooding or infrastructure failure. If
health pandemics return to plague the Prairie State, the
technology can be employed at mass vaccination, testing
clinics, as well (example).
ILEAS is licensing AM frequencies 1620, 1650, 1670 and
1700 throughout Illinois for the new radio service,
which commonly has a 3-5 mile signal range and can be
received on vehicle radios. |
* * *
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| Do
emergency / health managers need a portable
IPAWS changeable message sign? |
The Source
publisher Information
Station Specialists recently received an inquiry from a
sheriff’s department with an interesting need: they
wanted a small
portable changeable message sign that could immediately
interrupt scheduled messages to display IPAWS
notifications, such as AMBER alerts or local weather
warnings when issued. It needed to be able to operate
via land power or a generator and be programmable via a wireless
(cloud) connection on a lifetime contract so there would
be
no ongoing service costs.
Possible applications:
- At an
event to provide information to inbound patrons.
- At a health screening / inoculation clinic.
- On an evacuation
or egress
route to provide directional information.
The sign could be
controlled from anywhere with an internet connection.
Would such a product be useful? Let us know your thoughts with an
email.
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