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Hand-held radios were supposed to revolutionize the way Ventura County firefighters did the job--faster service, easier access to emergency dispatchers and an added lifeline for rescuers in distress.

Instead, the county’s wildly varying topography and money shortages have plagued the radio system with countless problems and out-of-date technology.

“The fact that our radio communication system poses a danger to all of us can no longer be denied,” according to an official complaint filed by Fire Capt. Jerry Vandermeulen. “So far, these radio problems have only proven to be an inconvenience, but the potential definitely exists to get someone hurt or even killed.”

The radio system, according to Vandermeulen’s complaint filed May 29, 1999, has “deteriorated to an unacceptable and unsafe level.”

Dead spots throughout the county limit the effectiveness of the radio system, which has been pieced together over the last 30 years with the addition of mountaintop transmitters and receivers and the purchase over the last few years of hand-held units.

Vandermeulen and his crew can cite a litany of circumstances when the radios, called handi-talkies or “HTs,” have failed. In fact, the captain said, rescue workers take evasive measures every day to make up for problems with the radios.

Those include firefighters using personal cell phones to call 911 for more help or running back to a fire engine to use a radio in the cab to reach dispatchers in Camarillo.

Radio failures have included, for example:

* In October 1999, a dump truck lost its brakes and slammed into a van on California 126 near Toland Road in Fillmore, killing two men and injuring a third.

* In May 1999, there was an accident off Kanan Road in Thousand Oaks in which four people were injured and one of them had to be pried out of the wreckage.

* In November 1999, on Triunfo Canyon Road in Westlake Village, an apartment building was in flames and people needed to be evacuated.

So far, faulty radios have not led to anyone dying, officials said, but Vandermeulen and other firefighters say it may only be a matter of time.

“We need handi-talkies, but the ones we have are not powerful enough,” said Fire Capt. Mark Acevedo, who works in Thousand Oaks. “This area is the worst . . . something needs to be done.”

The radios, especially for the first engine on the scene, allow firefighters to notify dispatchers if more firefighters or equipment are needed and whether there are injuries that require ambulances.

Fire officials estimate that between 30% and 50% of the county is essentially a “dead zone” for the hand-held radios.

*

Following dozens of formal and informal complaints by firefighters, department officials formed a committee to study the issue and promised to spend more than $1 million to fix the problem.

“This has been an ongoing complaint for years,” said Battalion Chief Paul Ramonette, one of eight people on the “radio cadre” committee.

Virtually everyone who uses the radios can rattle off the dead zones: Piru Canyon; the east end of Simi Valley; mountain areas along the Santa Clara River basin and California 118; the east end of Thousand Oaks and along the shoreline, particularly near Rincon and Malibu.

The department knew it had a problem in 1998, when firefighters at a station off Yerba Buena Road near Malibu complained of being unable to make radio contact with dispatchers. A cell phone was then issued to that engine and is used daily by firefighters.

A solution, though, for the entire system has been slow in coming, not only because of a lack of money and transmission problems caused by the county’s mountains and valleys, firefighters said.

Vandermeulen’s complaint triggered an ongoing debate between firefighters and officials over whether the radios were ever meant to be used by firefighters to communicate from the field with dispatchers at the department’s headquarters in Camarillo.

Hand-held radios were never designed for that purpose, Ramonette said. Instead, the small units that operate on five watts of power were meant for communication between firefighters on scene and they work best within a one-mile radius.

“We’ve had all kinds of problems with them because they don’t work in so many areas,” Ramonette said. “But [firefighters] have expected more from the system than it can deliver.

“They’ve lost sight of the fact that being able to talk with dispatch is a huge benefit over and above what they should expect,” the chief added.

*

Not so, according to Vandermeulen and fire officials at neighboring fire departments who use hand-held radio systems.

Oxnard Fire Battalion Chief Clarence Slayton said his department recently finished upgrading its hand-held radio system after dealing for years with the same problems as county firefighters.

The improvements included adding more antennas and repeaters, replacing the hand-held units and adding cell phones to all engines. Oxnard firefighters, Slayton said, can expect to be able to talk with dispatchers in the field.

Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Brian Jordan said hand-held radios are critical for firefighters in that county, which uses expensive ultra-high and very-high-frequency systems to solve transmission problems.

“You’re going to have dead zones no matter where you go; that’s the nature of radios,” Jordan said. “For what our firefighters go through, they have to be able to use the radios to talk directly to dispatch.”

In Ventura County, dispatchers attempt to contact firefighters in the field on their hand-held radios everyday.

“Every time you see a firefighter away from a truck, it is implied that the form of communication for you to reach them and [for] them to reach you is the hand-held radio,” Vandermeulen said.

A Nov. 29, 1999, order issued by the department’s human resources office, in response to firefighters’ complaints, said “the mobile radio in the [engine] is considered the department’s first line of communication on an incident.”

There’s no reason, Ramonette said, for a firefighter to use a personal cell phone at the scene of an emergency because each truck has a working radio and an engineer is always standing by the engine ready to call in the order for more resources.

*

Maybe so, Vandermeulen and other firefighters said, but the hand-held radios are their lifeline in the field and taking the time to run back to a fire engine wastes time and sometimes just isn’t possible.

“It’s just a level of frustration when you’re trying to handle a serious, sometimes life-threatening, situation and you’re basically talking to nobody,” Vandermeulen said.

Additionally, despite Ramonette’s assertion to the contrary, there isn’t always a firefighter or an engineer standing at the truck, ready to call in for more resources, according to several firefighters questioned in the field.

Ramonette said fire officials recognize the frustration of firefighters and the handi-talkies and want to be able to offer them that option.

“To have the ability to get off the truck and run around and order their resources from the hand-held--that ability is something we definitely want to be able to do,” he said. “The whole thing is that it is a Cadillac system and we’ve got a Chevy system.”

Now the department may actually have money to do something about the radio problem.

*

By nipping and tucking parts of their $60-million budget, fire officials have found about $1.3 million to fix the problem, but they don’t know exactly how to spend it.

Since 1996, the department has used Motorola’s Sabre handi-talkie system, Ramonette said. The radios beam a signal to a receiver on a mountaintop, which then transmits the information to the dispatch center--when the system works.

The committee researching the radios and a Canoga Park consulting firm found that a successful system will require new hand-held radios, more mountaintop transceiver sites, more hardware at the dispatch center and possibly cell phones for all engines.

Ten new transceiver locations would cost $1.03 million, along with $400,000 to upgrade the dispatch hardware and $150,000 for $1,000 hand-held radios. Adding a cell phone to each engine would cost $31,000, and it will cost an estimated $300,000 to $500,000 a year to maintain the mountaintop sites, according to Ramonette and the group’s report.

That’s at least $1.91 million, more than the budgeted amount. That means officials and the radio committee must choose, which will likely mean new radios, cell phones, a select number of new transceiver sites and a few upgrades.

The sites being considered for new or improved transceiver stations include Laguna Peak (on a hillside above Point Mugu, which would improve communication in Oxnard and Camarillo Heights); Oak Park; Rasnow Peak (which serves Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park); Anacapa Island; the Malibu area (which would serve the coast); Torrey Ridge (between California 126 and Simi Valley); Lake Piru Ranger Station; and the Meiners Oaks area.

*

All of the locations already have vaults containing the racks for transceivers--some are already being used by other agencies, and the County Fire Department would essentially be renting space and installing its own equipment for hand-held radios.

Officials plan to test several different models of new hand-held radios and scout transceiver sites over the next few weeks, Ramonette said, adding that the new system could be working by next summer.