When Howard County Executive James N. Robey was a rookie Howard County police officer, he became involved in a vehicle chase. He was able to tell his dispatcher that the vehicle in question was headed into Baltimore County. The Howard County dispatcher alerted the Baltimore County Police Department, which sent its own cars to intercept the vehicle. As Robey approached the Baltimore County line, he saw his fellow officers prepare to apprehend the vehicle – and he also saw something else. The driver wasn’t alone in the car.

"I could see another perpetrator in the back seat," Robey recalled, "holding a gun on a hostage. I could see it, but I didn’t have any way to communicate that directly to the Baltimore County police officers in a timely manner."

As gunshots rang out, Robey tried to reach the hostage, but was too late. The hostage had been killed.

"There’s no doubt in my mind that if I had been able to talk to the Baltimore County officers, the situation would have been handled differently," Robey added.

Providing first responders with a way to communicate directly was a priority of the BMC Board for a number of years. Police, fire and EMS personnel found ways to talk to each other during critical incidents by sharing radios or systems, or having their dispatchers patch together talk groups, but the process was often cumbersome. Yet, in incidents such as Hurricane Isabel, the Howard Street tunnel fire and the I-95 tanker fire, lives depended on the coordinated response of police, fire and other agencies from around the Baltimore region and beyond.

In Febrary 2005, the BMC Board members joined representatives of their police and fire departments to unveil the new Central Maryland Area Radio Communications (CMARC) system. CMARC provides five channels dedicated to mutual aid communications that any first responder can use in the event of a major public safety incident.

"This new radio technology will give our first responders the kind of immediate, accurate information they need from a colleague on the scene - regardless of what uniform he or she is wearing," said Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith, Jr., who served as BMC Chair.Law enforcement, fire and EMS personnel demonstrated CMARC, using their own 800-MHz radios. "The beauty of CMARC is the fact that the system doesn’t care who manufactures a radio," said Ernie Crist, Manager of Emergency Services for Harford County, who led the Project Team. "Any make or model of 800-MHz radio can be programmed to operate on the CMARC infrastructure."

In Phase I of the CMARC project, approximately $700,000 was set aside for the purchase of additional 800-MHz radios for use in the Baltimore region. As a stand-alone procurement, this would have purchased 212 radios. Howard County was able to augment its own procurement of 800-MHz radios and, through economy of scale, purchased 284 radios for distribution in the City of Annapolis, Baltimore City, and Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties. An additional $200,000 was used to deploy infrastructure in Central Maryland and connect sites to MEMA and local dispatch centers. Funding for Phase I was provided through an Urban Area Security Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Domestic Preparedness.

The CMARC Project Team included representatives of all jurisdictions in the Baltimore Metro Area as well as representatives of state and federal agencies, and was a part of the Baltimore Urban Area Work Group (UAWG). The UAWG, chaired by Baltimore City Fire Chief William Goodwin, is charged with coordinating homeland security initiatives at the regional level. The UAWG include committees of fire, police, emergency medical services and public works personnel from BMC’s member jurisdictions.

One of the UAWG’s responsibilities is to assess the region’s needs and recommend equipment acquisitions that are eligible for federal reimbursement. In addition to the region’s radio communications infrastructure, the UAWG also focused on mobile emergency generators to serve as power backup for critical infrastructure, and a decontamination vehicle for each jurisdiction.

The UAWG also directed the region’s public information officers to develop a public education campaign. During the last half of 2005, the PIO subcommittee partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Communications Programs, and conducted market research to determine how prepared residents really are to cope with an emergency such as a blizzard or hurricane. The research results were used to develop messages and creative concepts for a mass media campaign. Look for the campaign launch in mid-2006.

The underlying principle of the UAWG’s activity is to prepare the region to respond to any kind of emergency, from severe storms to major transportation incidents to terror attacks.