Getting on-air in New Orleans

Jan Edwards' heart sank when he saw the roadblock.

It was Aug. 31, two days after the New Orleans police radio network was knocked down to 10 percent of its capacity by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards, a repair technician for M/A-Com of Lowell, desperately wanted to help.

But at a causeway into New Orleans, state police and sheriff's deputies were turning away all vehicles. He didn't even have a chance to show them the letter he had from city officials granting him access.

It wasn't until two days later or so that M/A-Com was able to get a technician to the roof of a 39-story office tower near the Superdome and put a key antenna back online.

The struggles of M/A-Com, which is owned by Tyco International Ltd., are just one component of the massive challenge workers face to restore infrastructure and make New Orleans safe. In the early 1990s, M/A-Com built a $26 million radio system for the city's police and fire departments and has maintained it since.

Before the storm the system handled 4,500 users transmitting about 200,000 messages a day on 24 channels. After the generator failed, only two channels were available.

Improving emergency communications systems has been a priority nationwide since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when police and firefighters in New York discovered their radios were not compatible. In New Orleans, the company says, emergency and safety personnel could chat only on crowded mutual aid frequencies for roughly four days after Katrina.

''Our communications grid was devastated and we need significant assistance in restoring governmental communications," Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco wrote in a Sept. 2 letter to President Bush.

New Orleans city officials couldn't be reached for comment, but M/A-Com said the problems were not caused by design flaws. The radiator for a generator atop the office tower, the Energy Centre, was apparently pierced by wind-driven debris at the height of the storm on Monday, Aug. 29. It leaked coolant fluid, causing the generator to fail and disable key transmitters.

The company expects to spend several million dollars on overtime and other repair costs, said M/A-Com vice president and general manager John Vaughan, with about 50 workers helping officials recover.

M/A-Com arranged Sept. 1 for a subcontractor to climb to the roof of the Energy Centre and to get the generator running. By the next day, access to 16 channels was restored and workers are continuing to make repairs.

In addition to the City of New Orleans, M/A-Com is providing replacement parts and technical services to 21 other customers in the region, from Louisiana State University to a NASA facility. It is using locally based vendors such as Tri-Parish Communications in Baton Rouge, to distribute radios, batteries, and other parts.

The company also has established an emergency center at its plant in Lynchburg, Va., about 1,100 miles from New Orleans. ''Our whole organization has to be in a position to say, 'Yes, go do it,' " Vaughan said.

M/A-Com and its rival, Motorola Inc. of Illinois, dominate the market for emergency-dispatch radio equipment in the United States, which has generated $25 billion worth of business since 2000, according to IMS Research in Texas. M/A-Com says its sales have grown 30 percent since 2001.

But as Hurricane Katrina proved, even the most sophisticated gear requires the backup skills of technicians.

Edwards, who ran M/A-Com's office in Jefferson Parish, said officials asked him to leave a technician behind when the area was ordered evacuated on Sunday, Aug. 28. But he couldn't force any of his three employees to stay.

''All I can do is to ask my people, not being the military. And everybody declined, for fear" of what might happen. he said. Edwards drove his 87-year-old mother-in-law and other relatives to a friend's farm 50 miles north. He figured he could rush back to New Orleans.

It didn't work out that way. The storm knocked out power at the farm just after Edwards heard a newscast refer to police radio failures. His cellphone didn't work, and downed trees blocked the route off the farm until Aug. 31, three days later.

Millions of other people also were out of touch. BellSouth said 1.75 million lines were knocked out by Katrina. Only two of 41 commercial radio stations in the New Orleans area were able to remain on the air.

In Lynchburg, Edwards' boss, Rob Nosenzo, who is M/A-Com's director of field services, heard secondhand on Tuesday, Aug. 30, about the radio problems in New Orleans. Nosenzo was frustrated in his attempts to contact police officials.

''The phones would drop, and then you would have to wait 20 minutes before you could talk with them again," Nosenzo said.

Meanwhile, M/A-Com had other problems to deal with, such as in Harrison County, Miss., where emergency transmitters in Pass Christian had been destroyed by the storm, along with much of the city. Gil Bailey, director of communications for the county, praised M/A-Com for supplying replacement equipment by midweek from a dealer in Jackson, Miss.

''Their approach has been to get people taken care of first, and as far as who owes who, we'll worry about the bean-counter stuff later," Bailey said.

Edwards was able to return to New Orleans Sept. 2, to check on transmission antennas at two other major sites maintained by M/A-Com. Police insisted he travel with an armed escort.

About a week ago, Edwards took a few hours off from his busy work schedule to drive to his house in Slidell, a city on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. The building was one of thousands ruined by flood waters and mud.

He had planned to put it on the market Aug. 29, the day Katrina arrived.

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.