Rescue 21 roll-out continues

The US Coast Guard (USCG) has announced that it began operating the Rescue 21 system in its Upper Mississippi River Area of Responsibility at the beginning of May.

This area covers portions of the Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri and St Croix rivers and extends across seven states, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas.

The Rescue 21 system is the USCG’s command, control and direction-finding communications system. It provides improved search and rescue communications and supports digital-selective calling, to enable the coast guard to carry out search and rescue operations more effectively and efficiently, to locate mariners in distress, and save lives and property at sea and on navigable rivers.

The USCG will roll out the Rescue 21 systems in the Lower Mississippi River and Ohio Valley by the end of June. The system will then be operational throughout the entire Western Rivers region, which includes the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers and their major tributaries.

The system has also been installed along the coastline of the continental US, Hawaii and several US territories and will also be rolled out along parts of the Alaskan coast by the end of 2017.