Nearly five years after 120 firefighters lost their lives in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers because they were unable to receive the evacuation order issued over police radios, first responders throughout the country are still not able to effectively communicate with each other. Hurricane Katrina was a tragic reminder that serious flaws still exist in our nation's emergency communications systems. The absence of a national interoperability strategy has resulted in disjointed efforts to fix the problem at all levels of government, putting our communities and those who protect them at risk.

In response to the lack of progress being made towards "fixing the radios," the FRC called upon the President today to commit to a "target date" to achieve national emergency communications interoperability within the next decade. The President should commit to this "target date" before August 29, 2006 - the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

All materials relating to the FRC's call for an emergency communications interoperability target date are available here, including an accompanying issue brief outlining the need to establish a "target date" for national interoperability, and recommendations for moving forward.