When Tropical Storm Charley dumped a year’s worth of rain in a day on Del Rio, the once-thirsty San Felipe Creek swallowed its banks, sweeping away homes, vehicles, trees and almost everything else in its path.

As many as 187 people were reported missing at one point in the wake of the August 1998 storm. A myriad of city, county, state, federal and government agencies teamed up during and after the disaster. Sheriff’s deputies and the local police combed debris left behind by the flood for the missing. State troopers went door to door to check on still-standing structures as well as their occupants. Both the Air Force and the Border Patrol flew helicopter search missions.

Rescue workers coordinated their efforts at the city’s U.S. Border Patrol station, but in many cases, once they left the building they were unable to communicate with one another. That’s because Texas law enforcement and public safety agencies’ radio communication systems operate on a variety of uncoordinated channels, known as frequencies, as well as run on different technologies. Having federal and government agencies thrown into the mix only added to the radio squawk.

"Nobody could talk to each other. It was crazy," said Val Verde County Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, chairman of the communications committee for the Sheriff’s Association of Texas. “There’s got to be a way where in times of disaster we can communicate."

The association has been directly involved in exploring this issue since last October, when it joined the Statewide Radio Task Force, a group of engineers and officials from eight state agencies trying to find a way to link the radios of patrol cars, ambulances, fire trucks and government-owned vehicles throughout the state. The task force formed in 1998, shortly after the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department began looking into replacing its 20-year-old radio system with a new, digital network. Because the estimated conversion price would have been in the millions, Executive Director Andrew Samson proposed joining other agencies looking into new radio systems to find one common system at a lower price.

It was a deceptively complicated idea however. The task force, has made little progress since its inception due to a handful of obstacles. Some statewide radio system critics say installation would be too expensive. The task force’s independent consultant group, RCC Consultants Incorporated, has recommended a statewide system that would cost an estimated $800 million to implement.

For this reason, the sheriffs association advocates keeping intact the existing hardware of as many county and state law enforcement and public safety radio systems as possible, said former Texas Ranger Joe Peters, a volunteer member of the sheriff’s association. The sheriffs Association wants a two-way radio communication system that will provide interoperability between new and old systems; not have all old systems replaced.

"What we’d like to do is just utilize the hardware we have now and just coordinate the frequencies," Peters said. "One of our goals is to just get the most bang for our buck, because the rural counties especially just don’t have the funds to put out an entire new radio system."

Members of the task force are also divided over the best technology to use. For example, the Department of Public Safety has already converted much of its system to a digital high-frequency system that meets Project 25 standards, based primarily on technology developed by Motorola Inc. But the Texas Department of Transportation, which has the largest number of radio users in the state, uses in some of its districts a system implemented by the Lower Colorado River Authority and two state electric utilities. The 900-megahertz trunked radio network, which covers a rough 30,000-mile triangle extending from Llano to Kerrville to Bay City, uses the competing technology of Sweden’s Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson.

LCRA’s 900-MHz system, completed in 1997, is basically a high-tech walkie-talkie system capable of establishing direct lines of two-way radio communication among the various agencies and departments currently stuck on lower and clogged frequencies. The agency, whose service area encompasses 58 counties, has made space on its new system for county and municipal law enforcement departments as well as other state and public service agencies. Kendall and Gillespie counties have tied into the agency’s network over the past couple of years.

Although it costs Kendall County about $12,000 a year to rent space on LCRA’s system, it’s been worth it, Chief Deputy Hugo Boehm said. Law enforcement safety was the main issue that led Kendall to ditch its old low frequency system for rented space on LCRA’s system, he said. Sheriff Henry Hodge pushed to get the Hill Country county in LCRA’s network after an incident a couple of years ago, in which a deputy got into a life threatening situation while on duty and was unable to call for backup on his portable radio, Bohem said.

"We said, ‘Man, we can’t have this happening again.’ " he said.

Radio coverage quality suffers in many counties due to antiquated systems developed to provide mobile instead of portable radio coverage. These low frequency systems emit weak radio signals that have trouble penetrating some buildings or reaching areas far off the beaten path. As it stands now, the frequencies of Texas’ different departments and agencies are across the dial. For example, Parks & Wildlife runs on an analog VHF (Very High Frequency) system, DPS runs on analog and digital VHF systems, and the Transportation Department runs on a mixture of analog / low band, VHF and 900-MHz systems.

The Sheriffs Association Communications Committee supports a VHF system in rural areas and 700 MHz in more densely populated areas. The various radio systems of Texas’ 254 counties currently run all over the dial. The association also advocates Motorola’s Project 25 standards.

In addition to dealing with financial and technological divisions, the task force must figure out how to deal with existing as well as new space on the radio frequency spectrum. Channel space is limited. All electronic devices use a frequency. Although these devices use a wide spectrum of frequencies, the increasing numbers of them as well as the growing demand for wireless services have shrunk available radio system space. The result for sheriff’s departments and other radio users across the state has been signal interference in the form of static and/ or mixed, indecipherable broadcasts. Interfering signals come from other counties or other agencies in some cases. In the border region, sheriffs departments also deal with signal interference from Mexico. New, digital radio systems, like the one the LCRA uses, give radio users the ability to have multiple conversations on each frequency. Instead of just being able to have a small number of conversations at the same time, Emergency Medical Service dispatchers, sheriffs deputies, state troopers, even federal agencies are capable of having thousands of conversations simultaneously with digital technology.

"The other systems are getting so crowded. Bell County used to blast us out of the water and they’re a long way from here," Kendall County’s Boehm said.

"There’s just not enough frequencies out there to give everybody room to talk," the Sheriffs Association’s Peters said.

The Federal Communications Commission is attempting to deal with the frequency traffic jams happening all over the country by reorganizing the airwaves. The commission recently released a report in which it dedicated 384 new 700 MHz channels to states for statewide, digital radio systems. Texas has until Dec. 31 to apply for a license for these channels. DPS is in the process of getting the state’s license application paperwork together, Peters said.

FCC has also established 48 frequencies for low power short-range operation as well as established five nationwide VHF high band frequencies for interoperability. Counties and municipalities can apply for their own separate frequencies on these bands if they need to. Although critics of the idea of hanging onto old radio systems say they are already too crowded, especially during emergencies, interoperability proponents say these new channels will help at least for the time being with the clogged law enforcement and public safety radio waves.

The task force’s RCC Consultants, a Houston-based firm that specializes in wireless and wireline communications and computer technologies, presented its assessment of the state’s radio needs to the House Appropriations Committee in March. The firm recommended a 700-MHz trunk system, somewhat similar to LCRA’s system. But committee members balked at the estimated $80 million price tag.

"When they started talking about $800 million and 10 years to do it in I thought some of the legislators were going to drop their teeth. I think it was a bit of a shock," said Gordon Dilmore, a law enforcement specialist with the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technical Center, who is advising the Sheriffs Association on how to go about assessing counties radio needs.

The fact that it would take an estimated five to 10 years to implement such a system throughout the state also did not go over well with the legislators, who wanted to know what the state would do about its radio problems in the meantime. So the committee asked the executive directors of the task force’s four major agencies, the LCRA, Parks & Wildlife, DPS and the transportation department, to come back in a couple of weeks with a plan that wouldaddress the state’s immediate radio system needs.

"We’ve been maintaining all along that these agencies can’t wait," Dilmore said. "If we had a massive natural disaster or god forbid a terrorist situation, the system would break."

RCC’s study did not take system interoperability needs at the county and local levels into consideration. Greg Munchrath, RCC’s vice president and general manager Southwest region general manager, said that is simply because that is not what his firm was originally asked to evaluate.

"We weren’t asked to come up with short term quick fixes," he said.

RCC recommends the state develop its radio system using two different tracks; one long term and one short term. The long-term track is what was presented to the appropriations committee. The short-term track would be a transitional system until the state could get a shared radio network built, Munchrath said.

"It makes more sense to develop a shared system than to operate eight different systems," he said.

In addition to DPS, the Transportation Department, Parks & Wildlife and the LCRA, the Texas Youth Commission, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Texas Forest Service and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission are member agencies of the task force. Munchrath’s shared system idea is what Kendall County is doing with the LCRA. The state is providing the infrastructure, while the county is responsible for paying for compatible radios.

"One of the big things is it costs so much money to put up towers and repeaters and we don’t have to invest that expense," Bohen said.

"One of the things that we’re trying to avoid is have the sheriffs departments build their infrastructure and have the state (agencies) build their infrastructure," Munchrath said.

In the meantime, Dilmore, who as a former Border Patrol agent knows first hand the immediate need for law enforcement and public safety radio system improements, is encouraging all 254 of the state’s counties to inventory their existing radio systems. The process is 50 to 60 percent complete and should be finished by the end of June, he said.

"Once we get the survey completed then we’ll start the concept of what this system should look like. Then we’ll actually start with a developmental plan," he said.

He admitted, however, that any real planning on the county level hinges on what the Legislature decides.

"We’re doing the things we can do leading up to that, and then just kind of holding off," Dilmore said.

Waiting is a disconcerting concept to Val Verde County’s Jernigan and to other law enforcement and public safety officials who have had to work natural disasters or other large scale emergencies in recent times.

"We need to be able to talk when lives are at stake," Jernigan said.