Spotty Radio Coverage Concerns Conn. Dept.

Oct. 15--SHELTON -- It happened again Thursday night.

Radios failed firefighters who responded to a house fire in the White Hills section of the city. In fact, the fire call came in around the time a Board of Aldermen meeting -- where several city firefighters told aldermen of their concerns about the radios -- was wrapping up.

"My pager went off and it indicated there was a fire in the White Hills section," said Alderman John "Jack" Finn, who is also a volunteer firefighter.

"But then it just went dead," he said. "Nothing came over the pager."

He said fellow aldermen wanted to know where the fire was. "But I couldn't tell them. The transmission just stopped," he said.

Finn said he was able to find the fire after driving to the fire station. "I heard fire sirens and followed them," he said.

He said he found it interesting that the communication failure would happen shortly after concerns were raised during the meeting.

Prompting those concerns was the federal grant application for $1 million recently submitted by Tim Manion, vice chairman of the Board of Fire Commissioners, to replace the aging, substandard radios. Manion said those radios fail 50 percent of the time.

That's a figure Mayor Mark A. Lauretti disputes, saying that, although it was put into the FEMA application, he doesn't believe it's true.

But Manion said the problems at Thursday night's fire on Stendahl Drive underscore the need for immediate attention to the radio system.

"The firefighters on the scene were having a tough time understanding what was being said because of static on the radios," Manion said Friday.

He said he received a complaint from the captain at the scene about the situation. "I've told everyone to send me emails to document all radio issues -- to keep a log of days and times," Manion said.

Lauretti said he knows the equipment is "old and has shortcomings and needs to be replaced," but doesn't agree that it fails that often.

"These types of problems are not unique to Shelton," he said. "I stand by my comments."

City officials -- Lauretti, Fire Marshal Jim Tortora, Police Chief Joel Hurliman and John Milo, director of the city's Emergency Management -- Thursday afternoon supplied documentation concerning the number of service calls, they said, were made by faulty radios.

The two pages cite 35 service calls for a nine-month period beginning Jan. 1. In the grant, Manion said there had been 12 repairs to the existing radio system in the three-week period prior to his submission of the grant application Sept. 21.

"That's just not the case," said Milo, a former Shelton fire chief. "The figures in the application just don't jibe with the facts."

Lauretti said the list of service calls are the irrefutable facts. "All the rest is garbage," he said.

Julie Reibold, president of Northeastern Communications Inc., which has a service contract for those repairs, said she couldn't comment on the figures the city provided because of client confidentiality.

"We do want a better system, but you can't incite the people," Millo added. "These are very minor issues."

But one city firefighter disagrees, saying it is "a life or death situation."

John Tatum, a former Norwalk firefighter who recently became a city firefighter, along with his son, was one of the speakers at the aldermanic meeting.

"I'm scared for my son and all the other firefighters," he said. "Someone has to wake up here or someone will die."

He said firefighters can't hear radio transmissions. "We don't even know what trucks are already on the scene," he said.

Chris Jones, a firefighter challenging Lauretti in the November election, said the city has known a long time that the equipment was old and needs to be replaced, but the city still sends them out to fires knowing the radios might not work. He called that "criminal."

Thursday he presented a challenge to aldermen.

"I'd like you all to come out with us sometime and ride on a fire truck to a fire and see what happens," he said.

Anne M. Amato can be reached at 203-330-6496 at [email protected].