D.C.'s Homeland Security Agency Disputes Transit Agency's Claims About Cause of Radio Communications Issues
Washington, D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) denied claims that encryption of the city’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services department radios was responsible for radio communications failures that occurred during a fatal Jan. 12 incident in a downtown…
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subway tunnel. The denial came in a report Friday. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) interim General Manager Jack Requa had said the agency wasn’t aware that FEMS had switched from analog radios to encrypted Motorola Project 25 (P25) standard digital radios until after the Jan. 12 incident at WMATA’s L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station, when problems with radio connectivity were seen as possibly hampering the rescue (see 1501220067) of passengers trapped in a smoke-filled train. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., urged WMATA and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to improve communications about interoperability of emergency radios between area agencies (see 1501230066). Available information indicates FEMS radio encryption “does not appear to have played a role in the communications difficulties” that public safety personnel encountered during the rescue, HSEMA said in its report. HSEMA also said it found the D.C. government’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) had coordinated with WMATA throughout the two years before it transitioned FEMS to the P25 radios and did 600 tests of the radios in every D.C. Metrorail station. OUC has fixed the radio connectivity issues in the L’Enfant Plaza station and is expediting a systemwide test of the radios, HSEMA said. A WMATA spokesman declined comment but noted the agency is waiting for the findings of the National Transportation and Safety Board, which he called the “only impartial agency conducting a fact-based investigation into this matter.”