WASHINGTON - Imagine: An airliner crashes on its way to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, scattering debris, luggage and bodies across two counties and the town of Morrisville.

Firefighters and law enforcement flood the crash scene, each agency with its own radio system, few able to communicate with one another.

Of all the threats to the nation's security, this problem of miscommunication -- called "interoperability" -- remains one of the most vexing facing the United States as it steps up efforts to protect the homeland. And it is one of the many facing U.S. Rep. David Price as he takes over the House panel that pays for homeland security.

The Chapel Hill Democrat plans a renewed emphasis on providing money for front-line responders -- the men and women who arrive first to disasters, from train derailments to hurricanes.

"You don't just target for terrorism; you also target for vulnerabilities in other areas," Price said. "In North Carolina, we face major natural perils."

As chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, Price is keen to take a fresh look at how grants are distributed. At his first hearing last week, Price got an earful about the need for federal standards for basics such as radio frequencies.

But that is just one of the issues the agency faces.

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, homeland security has transformed U.S. culture and its relationship with the world, touching aspects of society from the Iraq war to immigration to the banning of shampoo aboard aircraft.

"You can't codify homeland security into something that says, 'If danger, break glass,' " said Frank J. Cilluffo, a former White House adviser and director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "It cuts across almost all of what we do as a government and as a society."

Against this backdrop, Price's panel holds responsibility for funding a budget of more than $30 billion, nearly all of it for a Department of Homeland Security that has been beset by troubles since its startup in March 2003.

"It's no secret," Price said. "This is a department that has had serious challenges. It had 22 agencies pulled together. That's a tall order for anybody."

The department has to protect the borders from illegal immigrants and terrorists, keep airplanes safe, respond to natural disasters, sift through intelligence and patrol the nation's oceans.

Little has gone as planned for the new agency. The most recent signs of trouble came last week.

An Inspector General report found that the Coast Guard's program for a new fleet of ships, called Deepwater, is over budget and producing cutters with too-short life spans. The report also found that the Coast Guard hampered the investigation.

Price said he will go through the department's problems as part of at least 22 hearings this spring, one for each Homeland Security office.

"It's the best oversight Congress does, because it's tied to the power of the purse," Price said. "Departments have to listen to us because we provide funding."

Part of the oversight includes fact-finding trips. Price traveled to New Orleans last month to measure the cleanup progress from Hurricane Katrina. He plans a trip in a few weeks to the border with Mexico.

President Bush is scheduled to release his proposed federal budget today, kicking off months of hearings in Congress about how or whether to match his ideas.

Price began early, holding a hearing last week on the department's long-term goals.

Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior policy scholar with Stanford University, furthered Price's ideas about making natural disasters, along with food safety and public health, a high priority.

"Natural hazards preparedness should be made part of the core of homeland security," Jenkins testified.

Price would keep the subcommittee's principle of sending money to at-risk communities, but he wants to revisit the idea of which communities are most at risk.

That's fine to people such as John Rukavina, Wake County public safety director. His folks would be the ones figuring out how to communicate during a disastrous plane crash.

"Depending on whether you're a pessimist or an optimist or in public safety or not, people say, 'Not much has happened in a while,' " Rukavina said. "I just think it means something can happen any time."

Price isn't the only one taking measure of the department.

In the House, Congress has a separate Homeland Security policy committee, led by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson.

Thompson has his own ideas about improvements, saying last week he wants to toughen regulation of chemical plant security and bring under federal control the security of public rail and mass transit systems.

It's up to Price's panel to pay for those projects, meaning the leaders have to work together.

"I don't think any individual owns this mission entirely," Cilluffo said.

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