Accomplished professional with a proven track record at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, adept in data entry and verbal communication. Excelled in enhancing information accessibility and fostering inter-agency collaboration. Demonstrated exceptional organizational abilities and attention to detail, significantly improving emergency response operations and decision-making processes.
Post 9-11 I was tasked with coordinating the problems associated with interagency communications at the scene of a multi-agency emergency. Together with Co-Chair Steve Harte of the New York City Department of Information, Technology and Telecommunications, the New York City Interagency Communications Committee was formed. Starting with OEM, the FDNY and NYPD possible solutions to interagency communications were discussed.
The first most basic solution was to eliminate separate command posts and form one combined Incident Command Post. All agency representatives would report to this command post where they would work together to mitigate the emergency incident. There was much resistance to this but the agencies eventually agreed this was needed.
OEM acquired interoperable radio equipment which was set up with radios in all bands. these radios were programmed with the National and local interoperability channels as well as certain operations channels designated by the individual agencies. Bridges could be set up between channels to let agencies to talk to each other. These units were distributed to some of the major agencies and OEM installed units on their command vehicles.
The committee eventually grew to over 100 Local, State and Federal agencies attending our monthly meetings,
The committee was also tasked to develop the federally mandated Communications Plan for New York City. This was a monumental task which was accomplished after over 1 year of hard work by many of the committee members.