FDNY handheld radios had worked poorly, sometimes not at all, during the response to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In 1999, the department purchased new ultra-high-frequency Motorola radios33 designed to vastly improve communications inside steel and concrete buildings. But shortly after the new radios went into service, a New York firefighter lost in a house fire couldn’t be heard calling for help. Disputes arose about whether the radios were faulty or if they weren’t being used properly. Either way, in early 2001, the FDNY reissued its old analog radios, the same ones that were
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