[TowerTalk] Radio's/tunnels

[alsopb]

This is an extract from the Wash. Post.

Radios Hampered Response to Metro Fire 

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday , May 2, 2000 ; A01 

Trapped passengers could have been rescued and subway service restored
in 70 minutes instead of four hours, if the telephones and radios of
the D.C. fire department had not repeatedly cut out or temporarily
gone dead, Metro officials said yesterday in a review of the April 20
tunnel fire.

Firefighters who rushed to the tunnel between the Farragut West and
Foggy Bottom stations shortly after 5 p.m. found themselves in a
"communications blackout," unable to talk to each other on their
hand-held radios or to Metro officials on their cellular telephones,
said Fred Goodine, Metro's chief safety officer. Fire officials say
they
still don't know what caused the problems.
*********************************************************

Have people strayed so far from reality that they don't realized
radios don't work in underground tunnels?  This
ignorance/unpreparedness could have cost lives.

They say later in the article that they will have to string "antennas"
in the tunnels in the future.

It is a tribute to the RF engineers that radios are so reliable in so
many instances that people take them for granted and forget they have
limitations.  Their "success" lead to these problems.  

de Brian/K3KO

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