Hawken Fire Freqs?

[robe7]

I have been listening to all the local Reno calls ok until today when FEMA took over. Any word on the Freqs used by them or if they have consolidated to one band?

[Exsmokey]

It is not FEMA that takes over a fire when it becomes too large for a local jurisdiction to handle. The agency with jurisdiction requests that a incident management team take over and then hands the incident off to that team. These teams are interagency in makeup, with personnel from federal, state, and local agencies. Type I teams are national resources and organized by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. They handle the largest and most complex incidents. Type II teams handle less complex incidents and are organized by one of 11 Geographical Area Coordination Centers. Information on these centers is available at:

http://gacc.nifc.gov/

In the case of the Hawken Fire a Type I incident management team took over the fire from a Type II team a day or two ago. Prior to that, it was most likely managed by a local Type III team that manages incidents that have escaped initial attack and become extended attack incidents. Type III teams manage incidents that normally use a limited number of local resources or a limited number of resources ordered from other areas. They are also used for a limited amount of time, especially when the containment or control of a fire is likely within a day or so, although they have been used for very long incidents that use very few resources and are not a threat to high value natural resources or structures. Type I and II teams often hand a fire back to a local Type III team when an incident is declared controlled.

When an incident requires a Type I or Type II team the local communications system is usually overwhelmed and a National Incident Radio Support Cache system is ordered. This cache utilizes the so-called "NIFC frequencies" that are listed here:

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index..._Support_Cache

Command frequencies usually employ portable repeaters that are placed on a high point in the vicinity of the incident in order to provide coverage of the entire incident area. They provide communication for command and operational personnel down to and including division/group supervisors. Tactical frequencies are used by the division and group supervisors and the resources assigned to them. Divisions are the basic geographical unit of an incident and groups are the basic operations functional unit of an incident. Tactical frequencies are not used in repeaters. Logistical frequencies are mainly used in camp for functions such as the medical, supply, ground support, food, and facilities. Logistical frequencies can use a repeater if necessary and are on the UHF band. They can also be used to provide links between command repeaters if the terrain and size of an incident requires multiple repeaters. Logistical frequencies can also be used to provide links between AM/FM aviation frequencies and command, tactical, and FM aviation frequencies if terrain or other needs require it. Aviation frequenies are used by air tankers, air attack supervisors, lead planes, helicopters, helibases, and redartant bases for air-to-air and air-to-ground. The NIFC frequencies are listed here:

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index..._Support_Cache

There are usually local pre-assigned frequencies used for air-to-ground and air-to-air tactics. When an incident becomes greater than local in scope the aviation frequencies listed will probably come into use. Large incidents often employ additional VHF-AM frequencies that are requested from the FAA on a incident by incident basis. These frequencies might be used on one incident and then not used again in the area or anywhere in the country for months or years so it is difficult to list what these might be. Sometimes even VHF-FM aviation frequencies in the 163-174 MHz range are assigned on a incident by incident basis and their use may not be repeated for months or years. Frequency use is assigned by NIFC to eliminate or reduce interference between multiple incidents. If aviation frequencies not listed are being used the search function on a scanner needs to be used.

Some basic knowledge of the incident command system is helpful when listening to a large incident and can be found here:

http://nimsonline.com/nims_3_04/inci...and_system.htm

The federal/non-federal interoperability frequencies have not been used much so far, however, as new radio systems are being built and existing ones upgraded these frequencies are being used more. Many trunked systems are being built with patches or interfaces with these frequencies. I doubt they would be in use on the Hawken fire, but that can't be guaranteed. I have not seen talkgroups assigned for patches to these frequencies. Those frequencies are listed here:

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index...teroperability

California is now requiring that the Fed/non-Fed frequencies be programmed into radios used for large incidents, primarily fire radios. I have not seen such a requirement or plan in Nevada yet.

If you have any additional questions about any of this feel free to post them or PM me. It looks like knowledge of ICS and the frequencies used will be needed this year as the fire season is starting to get rather active.

[Exsmokey]

It should also be stated that National Interagency Incident Management Teams handle more than wildland fire incidents. These teams are well suited to manage natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. A Type I team was used to manage the planning and logistical functions of the 2001 World Trade Center incident. The break up of the space shuttle a few years back caused debris to be spread out over a wide area in the southeast U.S. NIFC organized national incident management teams, as well as fire crews, were used for the recovery of the debris. The experience, training, discipline, supervision, support systems, organization, and equipment of these teams and the on-the-ground resources available to them are well suited for non-fire, AKA "all risk" incidents that must be taken care of. Incident management teams with hotshot, dozer, and engine crews were assigned to areas devastated by Katrina for search and rescue, recovery, reconnaissance, and debris removal.

The role of FEMA on large incidents is mainly for support of state and local agencies, providing for logistical needs, and for financial support to citizens for relocation and rebuilding. FEMA's role in operational functions is very limited. Much of FEMA's work is actually done by contractors, which is why the agency's personnel are often very limited in the actual on-the-ground tasks in emergency management. At one time, under the rein of James Witt, the agency began to attract emergency management personnel with on-the-ground experience, something that is essential for good planning and oversight in an agency like FEMA. The well publicized "dumbing down" of FEMA during the Bush administration has reduced the effectiveness and credibility of the agency as people with this type of experience are no longer attracted to or have stayed with the agency. A type of mass exodus of these rank and file people occurred in the 2001-2003 period.

NIFC incident management teams are in a long term crisis as well. Large reductions in personnel in federal agencies along with increased programs and/or responsibilities in those agencies has reduced the pool of qualified people to fill these teams. Increased use of these teams on all risk incidents has increased the time and length of season that incident management teams must commit to. Fire personnel, which make up a very large portion of these teams, have large responsibilities in accomplishing the National Fires Plan of 2000 goals for fuel reduction and management. Being away from the home unit compromises attainment of targets for this goal. With fewer employees in the agency non-fire targets are compromised as well. When very active fire seasons occurred in the past the Chief of the Forest Service used to issue letters directing all personnel that fires were the highest priority and that all non-fire targets were suspended for the year. Big fire seasons are becoming more frequent and in the long term, with fewer employees, suspension of targets is not working very well.

The pool of qualified people is aging and younger employees do not come with as much experience and/or are not as apt to enter the field because of the above factors. Not as many people are attracted to making their job their life and increasingly, with larger and more frequent fires, along with the increased number of all risk incidents, the job demands a huge commitment. I can say from experience, that getting trained and keeping the qualifications for six different incident management positions was incredibly difficult while working a job with the large and complex workload that I faced every day. Being absent for training and for assignments to incidents, including the 32 days during the northern California fire bust of 1987 and the 42 days for the Yellowstone fires of 1988 added enormous amounts of stress for several months afterward to an already stress filled, being the "go to guy", type of job I had. However, the experience I gained on large incidents gave me training and experience to handle the day to day incidents I faced such as vehicle accidents, medical emergencies, search and rescue, storms, media interviews and coordination, large surges in visitor use, law enforcement, as well as initial attack on fires, in a far better fashion than I could have without the large incidents. The result of this workload caused my wife to call herself "a Forest Service widow!" As I said before this situation is not for everyone and fewer people are choosing it. More and more people seem to expect and demand the 8-5 Monday through Friday routine, with limited travel. Family responsibilities with two parents working, often with an aging parent to care for, are factors in this.

The NIFC participating agencies have been planning in reaction to this. A new concept, called a National Incident Management Organization is in its first year of development and use. These are full time teams, with only the most important positions filled, and incident management is their only job, The NIMO concept has been conceived as a way to handle the increased workload in incident management using fewer people. A way of "doing more with less." The trouble with this concept, as one Regional Forester stated in a regional training session I attended in the late 1980's, is that eventually we are expected to "do everything with nothing." The NIMO concept has limitations and may not be able to address the trends previously discussed.

For more information about the NIMO concept follow this link:

http://www.nifc.gov/nimo/

[robe7]

Thanks Much! Went to those links...plugged those in and working like a charm. Getting Tac, Command, Logistics and some air support. Need to find the real air channels to complete this.

I live in Reno very nearby Caughlin Ranch and was actually at the site of the fire a couple of minutes afer it started. I couldn't believe how fast it spread from something that seemed like 20 feet long to what it is now.

I had my Pro-96 on at the time and kept hearing the local chief requesting Air Support within the first few minutes of the incident. He kept repeating that "if they got some air support now, they'll be able to nip it in the bud". But...of course it took quite sometime for the air support to arrive (I figure about 2 hours for a couple of small planes and then another hour or two for the bigger stuff) by then it was getting dark and the planes had to go. The Air support dispatch kept stating that "they were working on it".

It is so frustrating to watch and listen to what was going on knowing that there was nothing being done to beat that thinh down berfore the winds really kicked in and the whole thing went crazy.

I live right down the block from the command center. I think I'll go by there today and check out the scene.

Thanks again!

[NVJims]

Operations are using C1 and C2 repeaters and most of the tacs. Logistics are an L2.
Was there...

[joking]

ExSmokey - also the Type 1 team set up a temp Air Traffic Control Tower at Stead Airfield just to handle the air traffic for the aircraft involved in Hawken and the other fires in the area - like you said that a good indication they getting overwhelmed!!! - just a little info that probably not to many knew about - you probably know better than me but I don't think they set up the temp ATC towers to often.

[NVJims]

Shortly after I got the radios working in the tower, tanker 55 took off with a load and there were 2 other heavies sitting on the ramp and 2 SEATs..... Stead has the tanker base, they were running some of the heavy copters out of there, and, of course standard general aviation..... the tower was needed.

[Exsmokey]

Regarding the comments that not everything was done to knock this fire down. That is a very common comment made in the case of almost every wildland fire that gets large. Often this comment is made when resources arrive on scene and stay in staging until the incident commander can organize the response. When a wildland fire is blowing up during initial attack the chances of accidents, such a burn overs, are very high. I don't know if this was the case on this particular fire, but has been on some fires I've been on or have been very familiar with.

Another factor is that response times for wildland agencies is not as short as it is for municipal fire departments. There are fewer stations, less equipment, and far more ground to cover in the case of wildland fire. When you are on scene watching a fire get bigger, a few minutes becomes a half hour in your mind. Quite often a fire is going to get large whether units are on scene in 10 minutes or 30 minutes. In a few cases during my career I've watched fires ignite (spot fires while assigned to larger fires) and have taken action within 2 minutes or less and have lost control of the fire anyway. I've been very close to ignitions while driving patrol with a Type 6 engine and arrived within 5 minutes and was not able to knock the fire down with 200 gallons of water when the fire was 100 feet in diameter upon my arrival.

The location of this start, where a great deal of city streets have to be negotiated can delay responses. The nearest Forest Service engines are stationed in Sparks (at the Forest Supervisor's Office on Franklin Way) and near Verdi. As I understand it units were on another response north of Reno when the report of this fire came in, and it became the higher priority for staffing right away. Thus many of the units were further away from their stations than they would have been if the Hawken fire was the only start at the time.

The lack of air support at the beginning of fire was most likely due to aircraft being committed to other incidents. Often times tankers are returning from a fire to reload and return to the incident they are working. Before responding to a new incident they must land and load. Since the grounding of the heavy air tankers in 2002, I don't believe as many air tankers are on contract anymore. The number is definetly lower as far as heavy air tankers, which has been partially made up for by increasing the number of heli-tankers available, but helicopters of that size fly slower than fixed wings so it isn't an even trade.

People should also know that the two largest federal wildland fire management agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have sustained budget cuts and are up against factors that at their level are extremely difficult to address. In some cases engines are not staffed at all and others are now on a five day schedule. The five day schedule has been in place in many jurisdictions for about three years now. It is a budget cut that is rarely noticed by the public as they see a station staffed most of the days they drive by it. The result is not having nearly one third of the engines available each day. The actual figure is 28.6% but when you add in illnesses, family emergencies, and increased mechanical out of service situations the figure is likely 33%. Quite often an engine is in service and short the full crew.

The increasing amount of mechanical problems has resulted from the presidential administration forcing the agencies to close up their vehicle maintenance facilities and outsource the operation. This in spite of 3 rounds of studies that showed the government run operation to be superior in service while costing less. The administration kept changing the criteria for each round of the study until they got the outcome they desired. Horror stories about level of service and mistakes began almost immediately and continue.

The other factor is a crisis in filling fire positions. There are unprecedented numbers of vacancies in fire management at the federal level. Many people assume that the federal government has the best pay and benefits in public service. The opposite is the actual situation with local government having the best benefits, followed by the states, and then there is a wide gap to the bottom of the list where the federal government is located. Federal agencies are losing employees they have trained to state and local agencies because of this benefit gap. The problem is particularly bad in California where the cost of living is much higher than most locations in the west. Positions such as engine captains and battalion chiefs, that require a lot of training and a lot of experience to perform safely.

Some of this can't be solved with pay increases, as the climate for entering a public service career is completely different than it was when I began my career in the early 1970's. The number of people applying for beginning positions is a small fraction of what it was when I began. The popularity of a public service career is not the same with high school and college aged people anymore. In addition people in other functions within natural resource agencies, who are not full time in fire management, those we often call the "miliitia" or "reserves", willing to be involved in fire management is dropping. First, due to a lack of interest, and second because there are fewer employees in these agencies to draw from. Those remaining have a higher workload and more responsibility than in the past so the time committment of fire management can be overwhelming.

To see the results of these various factors follow this link:

http://www.wildlandfire2.com/news/wildweb/wildweb.htm

Click onto one of the dispatch centers to see a listing of resources and their status. You will not see the resources no longer staffed on a long term basis other than the gaps in the number sequences, but watch the number of resources out of service on a given day over a period of a couple of weeks and you may be able to understand the problem.

Another aid for listening to wildland fire on the radio is the following glossary of wildland fire terminology. Follow this link:

http://www.nifc.gov/fireinfo/glossary.html

[Exsmokey]

A position to watch while looking at the CAD on the various dispatch centers is the "Patrol" and "Prevention" units. These are the folks out beating the brush everyday keeping track of people and contacting them. On-the-ground fire prevention is very effective, especially when prevention units (a geographical area) are not so large that the effectivness is reduced. Filling and retaining people in those positions has, in many cases, been more difficult than any of the other positions. Often these units are now staying in quarters as the budget does not allow for as much mileage as it once did. With the fuel buildup situation that has been building for over a hundred years combined with record breaking low fuel moistures it makes me, a former fire prevention officer, very uncomfortable when I look at the CAD's and see more than half of the patrols "out of service" or "available quarters" rather than "in service." Some dispatch centers do not list positions as "vacant", rather they show "out of service" and the real picture is not evident. Other dispatch centers such as the Owens Valley center close to me, which dispatches for the Forest I retired from, show positions as "vacant" on the CAD.