Upgrading S.D.'s Emergency Communication System Could Cost $100 Million

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published May 1, 2008 at 2:05 PM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

A report to San Diego's Regional Fire Protection Committee warns San Diego will need to spend well over $100 million in the next five years to purchase a new communication system for emergency personn

A report to San Diego's Regional Fire Protection Committee warns San Diego will need to spend well over $100 million in the next five years to purchase a new communication system for emergency personnel. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

The Regional Committee had just finished discussing the need to spend several million dollars to lease more fire fighting aircraft when the County's Emergency Services Director brought up a new and even more expensive issue .

Become a KPBS sponsor

Ron Lane says the county's communication system, which is constantly updated and worked well during the October wildfires, will become obsolete in 2013.

Lane: As everybody knows wireless technology is changing exponentially -- there's a lot we may not even be using handhelds five or seven years from now.

Lane says the cost to acquire whatever the new wireless communication system is could be about $70 million each for the county and the city. He says San Diego has a $6.5 million dollar federal grant to start building the foundations of the future system. The goal is to have that meets national standards. But right now, Lane says, even officials at the state level are struggling to predict a technology that will allow all emergency personal around California to communicate with each other in a disaster.

Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

twitter

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.