The Membership Advisory Panel (MAP) is seeking expressions of interest from members to represent UFBA on the Fire and Emergency Public Safety Network Working Group.
The Public Safety Network Group is a joint programme of work between FENZ, Police, Wellington Free Ambulance, and St John to replace aging networks with modern digital capability. In particular, the focus is on digitising our Land Mobile Radio (LMR), with our current technology in FENZ at its end of life. There is also scope to include personal alerting and priority cellular in this work.
Reflecting on the recent spate of rain events when people living remotely in our region were without communication, good representation to ensure the working group is aware that farms and business operating in the outer Sounds lost connectivity.
Several locations were further limited by compromised road access, unusual sea access, availability of machinery and an aged resident population. Many other parts of the Top of the South Island and Westcoast are vulnerable when power is lost or when there has been no sun for several days. It is vital that the Rural Advisory Committee in Marlborough and soon in Nelson Tasman have good representation on the Emergency Public Safety Network working group, says Gavin O’Donnell, Past President of Nelson Federated Farmers.
Gavin says, while there are challenges providing services to people living remotely and agrees with those who believe, people living remotely should take some personal responsibility if they chose to live and work in those locations, we do need to make sure those people are not “out of sight out of mind.” Gavin suggests reliable communication is one of basic importance for public safety emergency response and recovery.
FENZ, Ambulance, Police, Civil Defence, Maritime an Emergency Air Operations all have their own radio operating frequencies and channel allocations. Some agencies can operate on the same channel frequency as other agencies should they need to. Gavin reports, that because of the individual limitations of communications equipment required to operate in and around large urban buildings, remote rural environments, and marine locations in addition to the numerous cellular networks these can at times be a bit like having a telephone conversation with several family members all in different locations on separate phones, or a large Zoom meeting where everyone has the video turned off. Not ideal in an emergency!
Currently we have different agencies, systems, and frequencies, (mainly using cellular, UHF and VHF radio frequencies,) with some shared between agencies operating through an extensive network of towers and translators all at risk of operation and system failure at critical times. There’s a lot to consider and a strong Rural voice should be part of both the Public Safety Network working groups and Rural Advisory Groups!
