NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, Pa. – In an emergency, every second counts, making communication crucial for first responders.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, across Northampton County, communication was disrupted due to radio frequency issues.<\/p>\n
First responders that 69 News spoke to say those radio issues have sparked a lot of concern, and they’re hoping the county can come up with a permanent fix.<\/p>\n
“To put it in layman’s terms, it sounds like you’re talking to aliens,” says Chief Brett Buskirk.<\/p>\n
Chief Brett Buskirk with the Nancy Run Fire Company says they’ve been reporting radio issues to the county since late 2024.<\/p>\n
He says over the past two years, the frequency has been spotty,\u00a0and two weeks ago, that problem got worse.<\/p>\n
“October 2nd, it began where we couldn’t use the radios at all,” Chief Buskirk says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chief Buskirk says in parts of the county you couldn’t hear anybody.<\/p>\n
“A lot of the time there were problems with us even getting the information or getting out to the comm center letting them know we’re on the way to a call,” says Firefighter\/ EMT Carlos Veloz.<\/p>\n
For Nancy Run and many of the county’s other first responders, these radios are a lifeline.<\/p>\n
“So we use our radios for anything from basic fire police calls to direct traffic to a house fire,” says Lieutenant Jacob Serfass.<\/p>\n
“There’s a term in the fire service we call a mayday. Calling a mayday means a firefighter is down; if that doesn’t get out, somebody’s gonna die,” Chief Buskirk says.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Northampton County says the issue was reported to them on October 2nd and that they immediately engaged their radio maintenance vendor.<\/p>\n
They say the issue is believed to be related to atmospheric conditions that can temporarily affect radio frequencies.<\/p>\n
Northampton County Executive Tara Zrinski says testing and troubleshooting are still underway, but reception has been restored.<\/p>\n
“This is exactly why we need to keep investing in the P25 system,” says Zrinski.<\/p>\n
The P25 radio system is an upgrade from what many emergency services in the county currently use.<\/p>\n
“The P25 system cannot be fully implemented until everyone has these radios, and they’re costly; they’re approximately $10,000 per radio,” she explained.<\/p>\n
Firefighters at Nancy Run say during an emergency every second counts,\u00a0 and they’re hoping the county can come up with a permanent radio solution to keep the calls coming and keep the community safe.<\/p>\n
“Funding\u2019s not an excuse, their inability to not do anything isn’t an excuse. It needs to happen,” Chief Buskirk says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The county says it remains in regular contact with its radio maintenance vendor and first responders and will continue monitoring the system as part of its ongoing emergency communications operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, Pa. – In an emergency, every second counts, making communication crucial for first responders. Earlier this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,434],"class_list":["post-308481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-northampton-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}