Fed Up With Radio Station Asleep at the Wheel, County Moves Forward with Fix
 

ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN — The idea of an emergency alert AM radio station that has been pending at the Governmental Center even before tropical storm Ernesto hit St. Mary’s last September, will turn into a reality in 2007.

St. Mary’s Sheriff Tim Cameron in his previous capacity as public safety director floated the idea of diverting more than $106,000 available from Homeland Security grant to the setting up of emergency-related AM radio station before Ernesto.

The recently elected St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners will get an updated briefing on the delayed project in the beginning of the New Year, but Commissioner Tom Mattingly (D. Leonardtown) said many questions remain to be answered about the coverage area.

Hurricane Isabel and tropical storm Ernesto had exposed the vulnerabilities of the emergency management situation. During the hurricane, St. Mary’s county faced a power outage, and Somar Communications Inc., which operates the local radio stations, could do nearly zero to relay the important evacuation information. Their hapless staff left for the weekend amid reported computer glitches.

Cameron said Friday afternoon the homeland security grant was available for projects identified by the representative of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, not specifically for an AM radio station. “With Ernesto we redirected $106,000 grant toward the AM Radio project,” he said.

A manager at the Public Safety Department said it was wrong to assume the funding would have lapsed had it not been used by the March 30 deadline.

“There was no specific funding in 2005 for the AM station,” said Timothy Bennett, manager of the Emergency Management Division, St. Mary’s Public Safety Department.

“Many projects are ‘held’ as this one was due to a variety of management decisions,” Bennett added.

The public safety department was pushing for the AM Radio System prior to Ernesto. “In fact we have been trying to get approval for this since August. However, there are many important decisions that have to be made way above my control,” Bennett said in an email response.

Cameron said an AM radio station is a handy tool that has been successfully used in a number of jurisdictions for a variety of purposes including warning motorists about road conditions during inclement weather and road blocks because of accidents. He said the AM radio station would need several regional transmitters to achieve near county-wide coverage.

Much depends upon the kind of coverage the AM radio station can provide, Mattingly said Friday. “There are questions whether it will cover the entire county. The computer models showed a lack of coverage.”