The team worked 12-hour shifts to help with rescue efforts and later turned to recovery efforts. He went to his kids’ schools to say goodbye and then drove overnight from Memphis, Tennessee, getting to work as soon as he arrived the next morning. And that started the path to where we are today.”īill deployed to the Pentagon as part of an urban search and rescue task force.
First responders needed a way to communicate that was interoperable among different agencies, disciplines, and jurisdictions and that accommodated the ever-increasing use of data.īill Freeman, Senior Public Safety Advisor at the FirstNet Authority, said, “Talking about interoperability, the 9/11 Commission had the vision to realize that data was going to be a necessity for public safety. The 9/11 Commission examined the circumstances of the attacks and issued a report in 2004 that recommended a nationwide network for public safety communications.
“It was something that very few people who lived through that time will forget, seeing people putting themselves at risk in a very selfless way to try and save others and to try to get to the bottom of everything that happened to prevent it from happening again.” No greater job “9/11 was a national tragedy in every sense of the term, but it was also a moment for the nation to see our first responders,” said Darrin Jones, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI's Science and Technology Branch and member of the FirstNet Authority Board. The fateful events of that day forever changed our nation – and called on the bravery and selflessness of first responders as they faced unimaginable challenges. Bravery and selflessness of America’s first respondersīrad is one of tens of thousands of first responders from across the country who ran towards danger to aid their fellow Americans at the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the plane crash in the fields of Pennsylvania. Our mission is to oversee a communications network – FirstNet – that was created in light of the events of 9/11 to give American first responders a reliable nationwide broadband network. First responders struggled to communicate with each other.Īt the FirstNet Authority, our story is indelibly linked to September 11, 2001. Land and mobile phone lines were overwhelmed by a high volume of calls. Radios relied on by police, fire, and paramedics did not easily operate across different agencies. The tragedies of September 11 revealed fundamental problems with communication systems then used by our nation’s first responders. It was just face-to-face or yelling across the way. But communications at Ground Zero was essentially being done the old-fashioned way.
“After a few days, we got some repeaters up. For the first few days, we couldn't talk from Ground Zero back to our base of operations,” said Brad who now serves as the FirstNet Authority’s Director of Network and Technology Operations. The only communications available to Brad and his team were two-way pagers they brought from Utah. In the initial days, cell service was non-existent, land-mobile radios were down, and repeaters to boost signals weren’t working. When they got to the fallen towers, the scene was unlike anything else he and his teammates had experienced. Soon after the planes hit the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, Brad Morrell deployed from Utah to New York City as part of an urban search and rescue team.Īboard the military airlift transporting rescuers, Brad remembers seeing otherwise empty skies except for the fighter jets escorting their plane. Guest blog post by Edward Parkinson, CEO First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet Authority)
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