Boca Grande Auxiliary Communications Project

AUXCOMM Project Overview

SEA  Phase 1 AUXCOMM efforts directly support the Boca Grande Fire Control District (“BGFCD”) Island Emergency Communications and Interoperability Project. This initial phase is essentially complete in preparation for Hurricane Season. Most equipment (with the exception of repeaters and radio at GIBA) will be owned and supported via the BGFCD from individual and organizational Island Donations.

• This initiative is intended to provide local backup community emergency network radio communications coverage of Gasparilla Island during both natural/ man made emergencies and day to day events.

• General Mobile Radio Service (“GMRS”) provides survivable, flexible communications network between BGFCD, BBMA, GIBA, Island Organizations, Residents and Volunteer Civilian Emergency activities such as Volunteer Fire and Community Emergency Response Teams (“CERT”)

• Amateur Radio Service (“ARS”) provides long haul backup support to both local and off island coordination with Emergency Operations Centers (“EOC”) and shelters

• Dual Repeaters (GMRS/ ARS) installed at BBMA Building (highest most durable structure) to support South end of Island 

• Dual GIBA Bridge House Repeaters (highest most durable structure) to cover North end of Island

• AUXCOMM Base Stations at BGFCD to support evolving mini-EOC operations and potential emergency Public Safety Answering Point (“PSAP”)

  • • • AUXCOMM Base Stations at GIBA main building to provide additional layer of coomunications redundancy.

Boca Grande Emergency Communications

To put the need for AUXCOMM in context, during normal operations, smart cell phones and cellular voice and data infrastructure carry the bulk of day to day island communications between Public Safety organizations, residents and island organizations. 

While cell phones will never be replaced with two way radios in everyday life, as IAN demonstrated, island living sometimes entails times when there may be degraded or completely failed cell service for extended periods. When that occurs, it leaves almost a complete gap in communications between public safety, and the public. This proposal will add capability for island residents to have two-way auxiliary radio communication when the island loses commercial services.

Figures 2 thru 5 illustrate three distinct layers of existing and proposed radio networks required to ensure both local and off island communication resiliency and redundancy.

The primary County Public Safety Communications networks using P25 radios are shown in Figure 2.  Multiple channels of these P25 radios (Motorola) at 700MHz are used to communicate both locally between Boca Grande Fire Department (“BGFD”) units and remotely to Lee County Dispatch and Emergency Operations Centers.  Communication with Lee County Sheriff's Deputies, almost entirely flows remotely through Lee County Dispatch.  Both on and off island P25 communications were significantly degraded by the loss of the original tower in downtown Boca Grande during IAN, and are not expected to return to full capability until the new 160 ft tower adjacent to the BGFD is completed.   

Charlotte County also uses P25 radios but from a different vendor (Harris) and at a different frequency of 800MHz. The two county systems are able to communicate to a limited degree through off island cross band repeaters.

Figure 3 pictures an Island Only Public Safety network proposed for installation on the new reconstructed tower, using Digital Mobile Radio (“DMR”) Tier lll 450MHz trunking repeaters. This network is primarily intended to provide additional local communications radio channels directly to the BGFD, especially when Island Public Safety is operating in a standalone mode with cellular communications degraded.  

The Auxiliary Communications (“AUXCOMM”) GMRS/ ARS Radio Network that SEA is proposing in Figure 4, is intended to provide an important level of redundancy between Residents, Public Safety and Island organizations, in both daily and emergency use.

Specifically, AUXCOMM ARS and amateur operators demonstrated a rapid proven ability after IAN to provide  Emergency Communications off Island, when all other capabilities failed.

The local use of GMRS radios as a community emergency network by BBMA and Boca residents is represented in Figure 5.

Figure  1:  County Public Safety P25 Architecture

Figure 2: BGFD Island Only Public Safety DMR Tier 3 Architecture

Figure  3: AUXCOMM (GMRS/ Amateur) Architecture

Figure 4: BBMA AUXCOMM Community Emergency Network Example