The reason? They had different kinds of radios.

A new report says the country's police officers and firefighters have not adopted standardized radio systems fast enough, but local emergency directors say the Triangle is doing better than most.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, only six of 75 cities surveyed have fully modernized. That means emergency responders from different agencies cannot routinely talk on their radios.

All of Johnston County's police and fire officers have upgraded radios. Most of Wake and Durham counties are covered. And the state Highway Patrol has connected its radio system in most of the Triangle.

That means that most local emergency responders can communicate with other agencies in their county, if not always with other counties. Still, there are gaps in the coverage.

Raleigh police, the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, police and fire departments in Orange County and the Durham County Sheriff's Office are not yet connected to countywide radio systems.

In addition, the Highway Patrol has not extended its radio network to Orange County.

Emergency responders from those agencies can relay messages to each other through their 911 centers, but the process is cumbersome, increases the likelihood of miscommunication and consumes valuable time.

"The problem we're trying to fix is that every day there's a fire truck, an ambulance and a law enforcement officer responding to a call and they can't talk to each other," said Maj. Woody Sandy of the Highway Patrol.

That agency has received about $80 million in state and federal money out of an estimated $190 million needed to build a statewide network for Highway Patrol officers, he said.

Until recently, police and fire departments ran their own radio systems, mostly on UHF and VHF bands. But room was running out on the dial for the growing number of emergency responders in the United States.

The new technology uses a central computer to allow radios to share a smaller slice of frequencies around 800 megahertz.

Upgrading radio systems costs millions of dollars, however. Though more than $2.9 billion in federal grant money has been distributed since Sept. 11 to state and local responders, some say it is not enough.

John Rukavina, Wake County's director of public safety, said that many cities and counties have waited for federal grants to upgrade. But he said Wake got grants sooner because it was already spending its own money.

"Because we got in early, we've actually done better than most," he said.

By the end of this year, Wake County will have spent more than $28 million to upgrade its system, of which only $3.5 million has come from state and federal grants.

Several agencies, including the Durham Sheriff's Office and Raleigh police, are buying police radios and plan to integrate their networks with countywide systems by the end of the year.

The next step, Rukavina said, will be for Triangle counties to join a regional system.

(Staff writer Eric Ferreri contributed to this report.)