A precast concrete 40,000-pound shelter that will house the new public safety communication system at the Cape Coral radio tower is lowered into place Thursday. MICHAEL PISTELLA

A $14 million dollar project recently approved by the Lee Board of County Commissioners aimed at improving communication capacity for first responders took a step forward Thursday morning in Cape Coral.

The precast concrete 40,000-pound shelter that will house the new public safety communication system at the Cape Coral radio tower was lowered into place and secured.

“This is part of the government communications network which provides first responder communications for more than 7,000 users across the county,” said Lee County Director of Public Safety, Benjamin Abes. “Every law enforcement officer, every paramedic, EMT, firefighter, the radios they carry — that communication goes across this network.”

Abes said the BOCC’s investment includes a complete overhaul of the network and provide better coverage, higher quality audio and be able to host a greater number of lines of communication.

The Cape Coral tower adjacent to the city’s Emergency Operations Center is one of 15 across the county that work in conjunction to emit signals and create lines of communication.

Abes said with the rising population of the county, this project helps to better serve residents and those who protect them.

“We all know the county is growing very rapidly and there are a lot of different entities and responders and partners that come together when facing either a disaster of day-to-day emergency,” he said. “Having all of those people together on the same network and that interoperability is critical in providing the highest quality of service for our community.”

The shelter that touched ground on Thursday is hurricane-rated so it is hardened and resilient in the event of a storm so that lines of communication can stay open.

“The platform is elevated, the shelter has been hurricane-rated, and we’re very confident that after a storm the pieces will be in place so we can continue that high-quality communication standard.”

Abes said advances in technology were a driving factor in the project approval.

“There hasn’t been a significant overhaul of the network in more than 20 years,” he said. “Being able to replace it and do a wholesale county-wide replacement, means we can get not only the latest infrastructure but the latest technology in the hands of those responders.”

County first responders will now have the option of 20 different “talk paths” as opposed to just the eight previously available.

“During Hurricane Irma we had issues where we didn’t have enough capacity on the network for all of the radio traffic (and) we had to restrict some of the talk groups,” Abes said. “This network will be able to not only handle the traffic we saw, but in excess of that. We’re building for the future. We want to not just be ready for tomorrow, but for the next 5, 10, 15 years.”

Another important change is that if the main system control in Fort Myers were to go down (or this newly implemented one) the county would have the ability to fall back on the other and continue to perform without a glitch.

Abes said the county will test the new system (which is broken down into grids) over the next 60 days. Motorola is the company that won the bid to provide network services. Abes said if all goes well, the new network will be operational in the late summer, early fall.

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