Jldmt,

It is very common for the fire services to operate with well defined mutual aid agreements shareing manpower and equipment when needed. The municiplaity decides the level of protection they are willing to fund. I just read an article that the City of Boston spends $452 per capita for their fire service (The most expensive in the nation, per capita). There is always a tug of war between the budgetary needs. Personnel, equipment, physical plant, training and education.

To date Department of Homeland Security has spent about $22 Billion. A good article by Sec. Chertoff follows:

http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr...

FEMA is another federal agency that has a huge grant program for public safety.

http://www.firegrantsupport.com/

A ton of money has trickled down to local agancies. Granted, Butte, MT did not receive any funds for port security from DHS, but most coastal aganecies did.

Within all the money being spent the past few years had been a staggering amount of money spent on communication infrastructures and platforms. If you needed radios you could have gotten them If you needed CAD (computer aided dispatch) ability you could have gotten it. If you needed preplanning and data analysis software you could have gotten it. And the list goes on and on. It seems there were grants available for whatever your priorities were.

OBVIOUSLY the general concept was weighted for the higher risk locals, however even the smallest and most remote muncipality could have received money.

In my O. the biggest roadblock to communications has been adequate radio frequencies. This has nothing to do with software or even hardware. The spectrum is full. The solution to this problem has been adressed recently with programmable radios, Statewide emegency frequencies, and the internet.This still does need a good solution. There is only so much you can physically do within the radio spectrum and the physical world ( a national park versus canyons of concrete and steel) we are in.

Software for bringing all the various factors of interoperabilty, sharing data, and realtime communications does exist and is in use. Again IMO if VIGILYS was special or valued in the emergency community, it would have 100s of millions in sales already. It would have millions in support and maintenance servcie contarcts. They would be at trade shows and advertising in the industry periodicals. There are companies that do.

As I said in the beginning, the local community (from NYC to Nome, AK) decides the level of protection needed, and funded. In my neck of the woods, budgets are being slashed. Public safety, public education, as well as all other publically funded agencies are on a downward trajectory for near and long term funding. Federal stimulus money is a wildcard. Who will be dealt what is to be seen.

NO ONE should be under the impression that emegency data communication and sharing is a new concept. Google Motorola, GE, Firehouse software, LEASE systems, or a litany of others to see what is state of the art, and what is in use right now.

I hope this didn't seem like rambling.

Good Luck

(I) C. W.