How can Carinthia maintain communication in an emergency?
Power cuts lasting for days, valleys cut off from the outside world after storms, snow-covered towns: the freak weather of recent years has shown how quickly a catastrophe situation can occur – and how important it is to take precautions in order to survive such events as well as possible. This applies above all also for communication, both with the population and among the helpers, in order to coordinate the emergency services. “The mobile phone networks can fail; in the event of a blackout, communication breaks down after a certain amount of time,” says civil protection officer Fellner. So how can Carinthia keep up communication in an emergency?Satellite telephones and emergency generators“We still have old pagers. And all the important operations control centers and the members of the government were recently equipped with satellite phones,” says Fellner. In addition, the stations required for analog radio are equipped with emergency power generators that can run for at least 72 hours without any problems. “Carinthia is probably even a European pioneer when it comes to preparing for an emergency,” Fellner is certain. As early as 2006, the federal government stipulated that Tetra should be introduced nationwide in Austria. Carinthia has managed to refuse for 16 years. First it failed due to political will and the costs, meanwhile the technology is outdated… The fact that the federal government constantly portrays us as a “problem child” because of the rejection of the Tetra network doesn’t bother him much. A look at other European countries shows that they too are looking for alternative government radio models. The devastating flood in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia in 2021, for example, revealed massive weaknesses in the digital radio system there.
source site-12