Provides a Safe Haven in a Scary World

Every year, the Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina is besieged by hundreds of vampires, ghouls, mummies, and other bizarre monsters who descend on Franklin Street for the annual Halloween Festival. In past years, as many as 80,000 people have attended the open air costume party.

In 2005, those numbers were down a little to 50,000, but the party was actually a little scarier than usual, with police making a number of arrests for crimes that included carrying a concealed handgun, marijuana possession, disorderly conduct and injury to real property.

Temporary events such as the Franklin Street Halloween Festival, which moves the population of a small town into the length of a few city blocks, can put a real strain on local law enforcement. Faced with large, frequently unruly crowds, having an on-location command post with excellent communications can often keep these mega-parties from getting out of hand.

Luckily, during the 2005 festitivities, the Chapel Hill police department was able to borrow a mobile communications and command vehicle from nearby Chatham County.

Tricked out vehicle works a treat: The Chatham County Command Vehicle is a 37 foot long, remodeled RV (Recreational Vehicle). The rear of the vehicle has been remodeled into a dispatch area with positions for two telecommunicators. Radio Communications Company of Cary, North Carolina installed a single Zetron Model 4010 Radio Console which is handling all radio communications.

"We purchased and equipped the vehicle through a homeland security grant," explains Janet Scott, who wears two hats as Moore County Communications Director and Deputy Emergency Operations Manager. Because of her dual responsibilities, Ms. Scott was eager to exploit the dual functionality offered by a mobile communications vehicle. "Our first thought was how we could use it at a big emergency scene here in Chatham County," Scott says. "We could respond and have on-scene communications using the mobile command vehicle as our primary communication point. It can also function as a backup PSAP in case we lose our primary communications center." Scott goes on to explain that the need for a mobile communications vehicle first became apparent during a routine training drill.

The scenario involved a school shooting with the shooter still at large somewhere in the school building. Frequently, the purpose of such drills are to identify weaknesses, and this one revealed shortcomings in the communications system, as well as the lack of a central location for first responders to gather at. "Since we acquired the mobile communications vehicle we’ve done two additional drills and both times they went really well," Scott says. "There were a few issues concerning the transfer of data within the vehicle, but we’ve now got a new computer program that takes care of that."

Backup or roll out: The Mobile Communications Vehicle is parked next to the Emergency Operations Vehicle, where it is ready to serve as a backup dispatch should the primary dispatch need to be evacuated for any reason. With mobile communications vehicles often deployed to incident scenes where multiple agencies may be responding, interoperability is a big concern. Fortunately, every Zetron radio console ever sold features channel-to-channel patching capability. This proved very useful at the Franklin Street Halloween Festival. "We have the Orange County frequencies programmed into our radios," Scott continues, "so if needed, we could patch Chapel Hill and Orange County together through the Zetron console." Article provided by Zetron