Tower in the works for police, fire departments

By Rob Fraser/Staff Writer

Inadequate and unreliable fire and police department communications in Cleburne and Johnson County not only threaten firefighters and police officers but residents as well, Cleburne Fire Chief Clint Ishmael said last week.

Ishmael said a move to improve communications originally started out for fire and emergency medical services. But the communications scope has been expanded to include the sheriff’s office and other law enforcement agencies.

Ishmael is working with the city of Cleburne, Johnson County commissioners and the emergency services district to help fund the communications infrastructure.

Last year Ishmael secured a $378,000 grant for radios and the corresponding systems to improve the radio coverage for Cleburne and all other fire departments in the county. But the grant does not include money for tower construction.

The tower construction is expected to cost $390,000.

“There is a common problem in Cleburne, the county and the ESD and that is the infrastructure [the tower] needs to be in place to utilize the radio system,” Ishmael said.

Once everything is in place there will be one common radio system for all county fire departments, he said, and there will be a place for law enforcement to install their equipment and improve their communication systems, Ishmael said.

By installing law enforcement radio equipment on the new tower the sheriff’s office would save a lot of money by not having to pay for rental space on other towers, Ishmael said.

The tower will be 500 feet tall and located on city-owned property adjacent to the city landfill, on Island Grove Road.

Taller tower

The existing communications tower for police and fire and other city services is located behind the police department in the 300 block of West Henderson Street near Buffalo Creek.

The problem with the existing tower is that it sits in a low spot with a 750-foot elevation and the tower is only 130 feet tall, making the above-sea-level height 880 feet, Ishmael said. The new tower will be built on a site about 860 feet above sea level for a total height of 1,360 feet, Ishmael said, “and that will provide excellent coverage for the city and county.”

There are several areas around Cleburne where unreliable radio communications are more common than not, Ishmael said.

“It pops up in places you really wouldn’t expect it,” he said. “We have problems on U.S. 67 [the loop area], there are tremendous problems on the west side of Lake Pat Cleburne, the northern part of the city. Once you get past the viaduct in the Vaughn Road area there are considerable communication problems.”

Again the problems are generated by the topography of the land, he said.

“When the top of the antenna is at 860 feet and there are 900 and 950 foot elevations in the way, it’s a matter of trying to shoot over the hill. Radios work line-of-sight, so when you are in a low spot it becomes a problem,” Ishmael said.

The biggest communications problem is with handheld radios, he said. The radios installed in vehicles are more powerful and have greater success in completing transmissions, but “that’s not very efficient,” he said.

Radio communications are a safety issue for firefighters and police who are at a scene and for the people they are trying to help, he said. Handheld radios are used by emergency personnel to communicate with each other at the scene and to contact a central dispatch office.

One of the biggest driving forces behind this is that Cleburne and the other fire departments work together for mutual aid and Cleburne is responsible for hazardous materials countywide.

“We have the only trained hazmat team and hazmat equipment,” he said.

The hazmat equipment was purchased with a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the fire department is required to respond to hazardous material calls in the county.

“However, if we do respond to a call in Venus or Grandview, we are not able to communicate with Cleburne dispatch or the other departments because they are on different radio systems at this time,” Ishmael said.

“On the flip side when an officer has someone stopped when they exit their vehicle their venerability increases and that radio is their lifeline back to dispatch,” Ishmael said, “it leaves them exposed.”

In Johnson County no fire department and no law enforcement agency has adequate coverage of their area, he said. They have marginal to fair coverage and it makes more sense for the entities to go together and combine resources to create a good system, he said.

“We can all go together with a little money and get a better system for everybody,” Ishmael said.

An agreement is being fined tuned among Cleburne, the county and the ESD, Ishmael said.

“It’s a long process,” he said. “All entities are agreed on the basic concept, but we are just trying to iron out some final details.”

Another way?

Cell phone coverage is not reliable enough to be used during emergencies, Ishmael said. The cell phone lines become jammed very quickly during any kind of emergency, even in traffic jams.

“For everyday use cell phones are fine, but they have no place in emergency services,” he said.

Added to that is how there are places in Johnson County where there is not sufficient cell phone coverage.

The tower will be accessed from the city landfill, but it will constructed on the far west side of the facility. Surveyors have already begun to stake the facility’s outline.

Two shorter towers will also be constructed. One will be in the eastern part of the county and will be 250-feet tall, and one in the Godley area will be about 150-feet tall, he said. The 500-foot tower provides mobile radio coverage while the shorter towers are considered “voting sites” — signal information is collected at the shorter towers and communicates back to the taller tower and the strongest and cleanest signal will be used. “The whole process takes micro-seconds,” he said.

The 250-foot tower in the eastern part of the county will be built from the same funds as the taller tower. The shorter tower in Godley is eligible for grant money because it’s under 200-feet tall.

Cleburne police Sgt. Amy Knoll said police officers have found several areas in the city where “we do not have reliable radio coverage.” And there are some areas where there is no radio coverage at all, she said. She named the lake, Byron Stewart Park and the north end of the city.

“This is an extremely dangerous situation for our officers as well as the public,” she said.

The new radio towers will eliminate the dead spots in town and make coverage more reliable, she said.

If the government entities approve the agreement, Ishmael expects the towers to be operational by the end of the summer.

A resolution is on the Cleburne City Council agenda for Tuesday night concerning the agreement with the county and ESD.

Rob Fraser can be reached at

817-645-2441, ext. 2336, or

rfraser@trcle.com.