Communications Resources and Emergency Workaround (CREW)

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Knowing that communication helps command and direct first responders to calls for service, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department developed a new team, with communications tenure and innovative equipment, to address field communications in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster. The team is called a Communications Resource and Emergency Workaround (CREW) and their objective is to not let the absence of a working communications infrastructure become the biggest problem when it is needed the most. The CREW developed a noteworthy new public safety communications system that, in the past, was used primarily by the military. It is a mobile, self-contained, live situation awareness, High Frequency Manpack radio that fits in a backpack and allows video, text, pictures, data, and voice encryption without using communication towers, and it is Electromagnetic Pulse protected. The Manpack has been commonly referred to by personnel as the doomsday communications system since it is designed to provide communication when no communications infrastructure exists. These Manpacks allow public safety agencies to communicate with local, state, and federal agencies during catastrophic communications failures similar to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.