Nearly five years after the tragic events of September 11, our nation's leaders continue to fail first responders and the communities they protect.
At a House hearing this week examining the progress that has been made towards satisfying the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton
testified that they would not change
ANY of the
abysmal grades issued by the Commission to the Federal government.
With regards to
emergency communications, for which the 9/11 Commissioners last year gave the Federal government a failing grade, the Commissioners called the lack of spectrum available for public safety "
scandalous," and provided the following testimony:
First responders still do not have the ability to communicate with each other effectively. The Commission recommended that Congress expedite for public safety purposes the allocation of a slice of the broadcast spectrum ideal for emergency communications.
Those frequencies - able to get messages through concrete and steel high-rises without difficulty - are now held by TV broadcasters. They have been promised for public safety purposes for a decade, and will finally be turned over to first responders in February, 2009.
HR 5017 includes the text of the Homeland Emergency Response Act (the HERO Act) to provide this broadcast spectrum to first responders much earlier, by January 1, 2007. We strongly endorse this earlier date.
The reason for an early date is simple: Who can say that no disaster will strike before 2009? Why should public safety have to be put on hold for the next three years in order to accommodate the broadcast industry? It is scandalous, and we call on the Congress to act.
