EL PASO, Texas -- The Horizon City Fire Department is only one of many county volunteer fire departments that work in collaboration with the city of El Paso. Communication is essential, and while one department is upgrading their radio system, other agencies have yet to do it.

Horizon City Fire Assistant Chief Kris Menendez says up until recently communication was limited with an old radio system the department was using for their growing community.

"We had a lot of gray areas or dead spots, unable to communicate," said Menendez

With the new system's 800 megahertz signal strength, Horizon City volunteer firefighters can better serve the 45,000 people in the district they're assigned to in the county. The system is powerful enough to allow firefighters to communicate from inside thick-walled buildings. That was a shortcoming that proved fatal to New York firefighters on Sept. 11. And communicating with each other and the El Paso Fire Department, an agency they work with closely, is easier.

"Being so close to the city limit, it is important to communicate with them. We respond to a lot of accidents on the freeway at the city limit, a lot of fire on city limit," said Menendez.

Three years ago, a fire broke out at this shop where they make cabinets. Several fire departments came together to fight the blaze and one of the problems they ran into was lack of communication.

The fire near the Horizon City limits was so huge it could be seen from miles away. It took several days for dozens of fire fighters to put it out.

"The biggest thing was we couldn't communicate on the radio so we had to wait until we arrived on the scene and get a liaison from the different departments to meet in the middle somewhere figure out what the plan is going to be and then go from there," said Menendez.

Now, where do they go from here? Other fire departments will have to make the switch to the better quality radios in order to improve communications within the entire county.

In the near future the Federal Communications Commission will mandate that all radios need to communicate with each other. The Horizon Fire Department was able to obtain the radios with the help of El Paso Fire and a grant. But a big bulk of the money from from their budget.