Va. improves emergency communication in years after 9/11
September 11, 2009 | Virginia News
Eight years after staring into the smoking inferno of the Pentagon, Virginia State Police Superintendent W. Steven Flaherty still is trying to solve one of the biggest problems faced that day -- rescuers who couldn't talk to one another.
At the Pentagon in Arlington County and the World Trade Center in New York City, heroic efforts were made by firefighters, police and rescue workers who weren't always able to communicate because they used different radio systems.
Arlington firefighters lent one of their radios to firefighters from Washington so they could talk while fighting the blaze caused when an airliner was crashed by terrorists into the heart of America's military establishment.
Solving that communications problem -- called "interoperability" in the emergency-management world -- has been one of Virginia's biggest success stories since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as well as one of the state's biggest continuing challenges.
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