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NICOLE FULLERBYnicole.fuller@newsday.com

The Nassau County PoliceDepartment soon will begintraining the county’s 10,000 vol-unteer firefighters to workmore effectively with law en-forcement in the event of terror-ist attacks, active shooter inci-dents and other mass casualtyemergencies.

The move was in response toconcerns raised by fire officialssince the police department en-crypted its radio transmissionsfour years ago, preventing any-one — including fire officials— from listening in, said Nas-sau police Chief of DepartmentSteven Skrynecki, who addedthe frequency of active shooterscenarios across the country re-cently also was a big concern.

The new training to be rolledout this fall in Nassau includesdirections on what unarmedfire and EMS personnel shoulddo if they were to encountersomeone with a gun or otherdeadly weapon. And some in-structions run contrary to whatfirefighters are trained to do:Run toward danger.

“It’s about coordination of re-sources, it’s about working to-gether to make sure we’re allon the same page, basically allplaying the same song, on thesame sheet of music,” said Nas-

sau acting Police Commis-sioner Thomas Krumpter.

While Nassau police have ar-gued that concealing their inter-nal communications from out-side ears is key to officer safety— especially during a terroristattack or mass shooting, whenan assailant could benefit fromlistening to officers’ tacticalmoves— fire officials have fret-ted over their own safety fornot being privy in real-time topolice actions, officials said.

Raymond Maguire, aFreeport fire official and the di-rector of the Nassau County Vo-cational Education and Exten-sion Board, said while not

being able to constantly listento police radio transmissions is“definitely a barrier,” firefight-ers are hungry for training.

“Their concern is to have aplan . . . what is the plan goingto be?” Maguire said. “And it’svery important that the Freeportfire department, where I’m from,is on the same plan as theBayville fire department, or theFarmingdale fire department.”

At a recent introductorytraining of 200 volunteer fire-fighters at Adelphi Universityin Garden City, Skrynecki toldthe participants that he under-stood their concerns.

“It’s been bothering me, that

we haven’t had the kind of coop-eration that I think we need, thekindof cohesive trainingwith thefire departments that we need,”he told them. “Theway we oper-ate most of the time, we get to-gether, we put our training to useand we make it work. . . . But Ithink a meeting like this, wherewe stop and pause a little bit andreally think about the elementsthat really go into a good unifiedcommand, will really help tomake this smooth and seamless.”

The Nassau planTo improve communications,

Nassau police have given tworadios to each of the county’s 71fire departments in the pastfew months, but the depart-ment wanted to create a policythat would formalize interac-tion between police, fire andemergency medical personnelin the event of a mass casualtyattack at a school, shopping cen-ter or other large-scale gather-ing place in an effort to ensurefirefighters’ safety and the bestemergency care for injured vic-tims, Skrynecki said.

“Avalanche, avalanche,avalanche” is the call that thefirst responders are being in-structed to say over their radios,a signal for others to evacuatethe area of conflict immediately.

The “mayday” call typicallyused by firefighterswould signal

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Nassau police program helps volunteer fire crewscoordinate emergency response

Nassau police Chief of Department Steven Skrynecki speaks tovolunteer firefighters at Adelphi University last month.

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firefighters to rush into a build-ing, said Skrynecki, adding: “Ifwe got on the radio and said‘mayday, mayday, mayday,’ whathappens? Everybody’s coming tothe party, right? Everybody’srushing in. This is to turn every-one around.”

Directives and protocolAlso key is the police direc-

tive to run first, or try to hide,when confronted with an ac-tive shooter. As a last option,firefighters are advised to fightusing whatever tools they have.

Nassau police also have insti-tuted new protocols within itsCommunications Bureau to no-

tify the county FireCommunica-tions Center and the fire depart-ment with jurisdiction in thecase of an active shooter, Skry-necki said. The police communi-cations bureau will push policeradio transmissions on an inci-dent to the Fire Communica-tionsCenter to provide real-timeupdates. And the fire depart-ment’s chief or designee will beinvited to the police commandpost so there is constant commu-nication, he said.

“Your department will bemade aware,” Skrynecki toldthe firefighters. “That doesn’tnecessarily mean we want youto respond. . . . It might turn

out that we never need thedepartment.”

During superstorm Sandy,for example, Nassau police posi-tioned a runner between its po-lice communications bureauand its 911 call center — conve-niently located in the samebuilding inWestbury— to coor-dinate efforts.

Firefighters have long faceddangers other than smoke andflames when responding toemergencies. In March 2011,Justin Angell, a volunteer Bell-more firefighter, was shot andwounded when he respondedto a car crash. Nassau policekilled the shooter at the scene.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 343 mem-bers of the FDNY died re-sponding to the Twin Towers.Equipment failures and incom-patible radios that preventedcommunication between po-lice and fire were blamed forthe high number of firefighterfatalities, according to the 9/11Commission Report, which de-tailed how many firefightersnever got the message to evac-uate the towers.

The number of reportedthreats of mass violence in Nas-sau County has fluctuated in re-cent years. In 2012, there werejust three incidents investi-gated for potentially making aterroristic threat, a numberthat climbed to 11 the following

year, according to police depart-ment statistics. In 2014, thatnumber jumped to 22, and thendecreased to nine in 2015, statis-tics show. So far in 2016, therehave been 14 threats of vio-lence.

Suffolk has its own policyIn Suffolk County, the police

began a similar trainingprocess in 2013 and have con-ducted active shooter drills —including two last year — in-volving fire and EMS personnelto practice rendering aid to andevacuating grievouslywounded victims, said Chief ofDepartment Stuart Cameron.

Suffolk’s efforts have cen-tered on training firefighters inthe county’s 109 volunteer de-partments on a model thatlargely keeps firefighters andEMS personnel out of activescenes, by using the police de-partment’s Medical Crisis Ac-tion Team of highly trained offi-cers with EMT certification,Cameron said. Each is issuedtourniquets and gauze packs tohelp stop bleeding.

“I wouldn’t want to send anyof my police officers into ahouse to fight a fire,” Cameronsaid. “We can’t assure the firedepartment that it’s safer tocome in there with us, so wewant to bring the patient tothem in a less hazardous zone.”

Suffolk doesn’t face one ofNassau’s obstacles because itspolice communications are notencrypted. Cameron said theopen communication is “part oftransparency.” The police de-partment does have the abilityin some instances to switch to aspecial channel that can’t beheard publicly, he said.“There’s nothing to hide,”Cameron said.

In Nassau, Krumpter said al-though its police radios are en-crypted, the department hasthe ability to communicate pri-vately with firefightersthrough their radio systems.Krumpter also stressed thatthe aim of the new training isto prevent firefighters frombecoming victims of an activeshooter. He said the trainingwon’t cost the county anymoney because the trainersaren’t getting overtime andAdelphi provided the venuefree of charge.

Maguire said volunteer fire-fighters are passionate abouttheir mission and the newtraining.

“They wouldn’t be gettingout of bed at 3 o’clock in themorning for no pay if theyweren’t passionate about whatthey do,” Maguire said. “So be-cause of that passion, they al-ways want more. They alwayswant to be better.”

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A Nassau police training video is shown to volunteer firefightersduring the Adelphi event, a symposium on active-shooter response.

Nassau police and volunteer firefighters already work together, such as in this Westbury rescue. The new plan aims to make mass casualty situations safer for all responders.

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