Radios for depot emergencies should be ready by June

This story was published Thu, Apr 15, 2004

By John Stang

Herald staff writer

IRRIGON -- A 450-megahertz emergency radio system is expected to be ready for police and other emergency agencies in Umatilla and Morrow counties by early June.

The system is intended to help the agencies if they need to react to a chemical emergency at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Installation of the system will fulfill a Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program recommendation that the depot not start incinerating GB nerve gas until the radio system is in place.

The Army hopes to begin incineration in July.

Meg Capps, Umatilla County's CSEPP program manager, told the CSEPP board Wednesday that installation is under way to put radios into 200 police and fire department emergency vehicles in the two counties.

The counties already have 250 hand-held radios. All 450 are designed to create a state-of-the-art communications link in case of a chemical release at the depot, where officials expect to spend the next six years incinerating 3,700 tons of nerve and mustard gas.

The 12 microwave transport systems that connect the 450 radios are already set up.

The counties have worked on the radio project since September 2001. The $9 million cost was paid with federal money funneled through CSEPP.

Also Wednesday, the CSEPP board learned:

-- Oregon's Department of Transportation expects to award a contract to install a computerized system to link all traffic signals on Highway 395 from Stanfield through Hermiston to Umatilla. The traffic signals, plus cameras at the intersections, would be coordinated by emergency dispatchers to route traffic in the appropriate directions in an emergency.

-- Engineering work should be done soon on how to upgrade Hermiston's Elm Street to provide a good east-west emergency evacuation route.