Rough Fire Communications

The Rough Fire, burning on the Sierra and Sequoia National Forests and Kings Canyon National Parks has now been organized into three "zones." Although not foreseen when the Incident Command System when it was developed in the late 1970's it has become a recurring practice to divide very large fires into zones, with an incident command team in charge of each zone. The original concept was to group about 5 "divisions," the basic geographical unit of an incident, into "branches." Generally the span of control ratio is one to five, that being that a supervisor has no more than 5 positions to supervise. As there are only 5 branches on this fire, it is difficult to say why so many zones have been created.

Often geography dictates how an incident is organized. The Rough Fire is burning in one of the deepest canyons in the U.S., with very steep canyon walls. Driving time between portions of the fire can take a few hours. With this in mind the Rough Fire has a northern zone, western zone and a southern zone.

It is unknown how the command repeater system is configured, however, a system of 7 repeaters is being used. What isn't known is if repeaters are linked together based on each zone or if all zones have all 7 repeaters linked together in one system. The command repeaters use the following frequency pairs:

Command 1 168.7000/170.9750
near Park Ridge lookout east of Grant Grove

Command 2 168.1000/170.4500
on Spanish Mountain, north portion of the fire

Command 3 168.0750/170.4250
Lookout Peak, southwest of Cedar Grove

Command 4 166.6125/168.4000
Patterson Mountain

Command 9 170.0125/165.2500
Delilah Lookout

Command 11 170.6875/166.5750
on Spanish Mountain or Rogers Ridge south of Black Rock Reservoir

Command 36 ??/??
Fence Meadow Lookout

The frequencies for Command 36 are unknown. If anyone is within the listening area of Fence Meadow Lookout it might be possible to do a search and eventually eliminate Commands 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 and 11 to find another frequency that is transmitting the same communications, but is not one of the known frequencies. I wish I could travel over to the other side of the Sierra and do so myself.

Command 36 RX170.1125 TX162.1875

I'm confirming with my brother who's in North Zone if his command is incident-wide or zone-wide only.

Edit: it sounds like north and south were linked. They had to declare which zone they were referencing while speaking on command. The first few days calfire west zone shared the fed commands but then when they setup their own ICP they went completely silo on comms as well, switched to calfire command 11, which wasn't on any of the 205 or radio loads for north and south zone. Lots and lots of very bad politics and command team chaos on this fire. My brother just got reassigned to the valley fire and is very relieved safety wise to be hundreds of miles away from that command team's influence. Keeping to comms, at one point 15 days into their assignment they had to get radios cloned 3 days in a row. It was a complete disaster comm wise with the terrain and DIVS unable to communicate across their divisions, but same tac was assigned across the canyon, so cross traffic from other divisions. As if the COML didn't take terrain into consideration that Div X and Div H are on opposite sides of fire so they can share tacs, not realizing they were right across the canyon from each other and could yell at each other. Tones on tac channels changing 3 days in a row, some stupid/lazy mistakes my brother caught in the third clone that got fixed in the fourth clone, and dumb stuff like that which should have never happened if people did their jobs.

Rough Fire Info Map
http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/photos/CASN...h-Fire/picts/2015_09_14-16.15.20.385-CDT.jpeg

norcalscan said:

Command 36 RX170.1125 TX162.1875

I'm confirming with my brother who's in North Zone if his command is incident-wide or zone-wide only.

Edit: it sounds like north and south were linked. They had to declare which zone they were referencing while speaking on command. The first few days calfire west zone shared the fed commands but then when they setup their own ICP they went completely silo on comms as well, switched to calfire command 11, which wasn't on any of the 205 or radio loads for north and south zone. Lots and lots of very bad politics and command team chaos on this fire. My brother just got reassigned to the valley fire and is very relieved safety wise to be hundreds of miles away from that command team's influence. Keeping to comms, at one point 15 days into their assignment they had to get radios cloned 3 days in a row. It was a complete disaster comm wise with the terrain and DIVS unable to communicate across their divisions, but same tac was assigned across the canyon, so cross traffic from other divisions. As if the COML didn't take terrain into consideration that Div X and Div H are on opposite sides of fire so they can share tacs, not realizing they were right across the canyon from each other and could yell at each other. Tones on tac channels changing 3 days in a row, some stupid/lazy mistakes my brother caught in the third clone that got fixed in the fourth clone, and dumb stuff like that which should have never happened if people did their jobs.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info regarding Command 36. I can fill in another hole on the list I have going in the wiki. I've been trying to find out if Commands 13+ are permanent, or at least multi year assignments. Information I received several years ago indicated that any such assignments were temporary and did not carry over from year to year. Given the observations of many RR members in the past 3-4 years it appears this has changed.

This comm and incident management team problem does not sound good at all. I know that at some point in the past Cal Fire has indicated that dividing large fires into zones, with incident management teams in command of each zone was not envisioned nor provided for when the ICS was developed. When multiple teams are assigned to the same fire I've observed that an area command team is put in place to coordinate the whole incident. This was not the case at the Rough Fire. I know that 3 of the 4 area command teams were committed for much of the time during the growth of this fire in northern California, Washington and Montana or Idaho. This is probably why an area team was not assigned to the Rough Fire It would seem as one team would have to be held in reserve to take over as soon as a team was rotated off for the required rest period.

This fire only had 5 branches so I don't know why 3 incident management teams were used. The access characteristics and long travel times justify two teams, but three? I've been out of the game for a long time now, but it would seem this zone issue needs to be addressed. Larger, more complex and more dangerous fires are likely in the future. The kinds of mix ups you've related could lead to safety problems on the ground.

I haven't had access to very many comm plans since retirement, but I've not heard of one fire having 7 command repeaters. Prior to narrowbanding in 2005 and the development of the national interoperability system there were only 7 commands available. Imagine using every one of them at one fire.

Does anyone have the incident Air-Ground freqs?

I think this fire might be setting a new record as there are now 10 command repeaters. It appears they that there are two separate command nets, one for the north and one for the south. Here is the lineup now:

North Net

Command 4 166.6125 Patterson Peak
Command 9 170.0125 Delilah L.O.
Command 11 170.6875 Spanish Mtn.
Command 36 170.1125 Fence Meadow L.O.

South Net

Command 1 168.7000 Rodgers Ridge
Command 30 169.8125 Lookout Peak (on FS'/NPS boundary just south of SR 180)
Command 37 172.5500 Mt. Sampson
Command 39 173.8750 Spanish Mtn.
Command 40 172.7000 Parkridge

Command 6 168.4750 Along the Sycamore Springs road due south of Fence Meadow L.O. Use of this repeater allows access to both nets.

Air to Ground

170.0000 Command Air to Ground, National Air to Ground Channel 28
168.8625 Tactical Air to Ground. This is a special temporary assignment drawn from unused federal frequencies in the area.

The IAP Operations Map is confusing. The north zone labeled there command channels to follow the national command frequency naming, so it shows Command 9, Command 11 and this does not reflect the channels in handhelds. The south zone has 6 command repeaters in Channels 1-6 and they are named as Command 1, Command 2 . . . . . to follow the channel in the radio they are programmed into. Now Command 1 is actually NIFC Command 40 and this is not good as it can cause confusion. On the south zone Command 4 is actually NIFC Command 1. This results in the map showing two command 4's. If the fire was showing extreme fire behavior such confusion can lead to safety problems. Northzone indicated that his brother was on this fire and that communications was not being run very well. This labeling seems to be consistent with that.

Thank you, Smokey.

Wasn't 170.000 supposed to be removed from service? At least a couple of years ago this was posted here, and there were new freqs proposed. Did it rise from the dead?

Progline said:

Thank you, Smokey.

Wasn't 170.000 supposed to be removed from service? At least a couple of years ago this was posted here, and there were new freqs proposed. Did it rise from the dead?

Click to expand...

Its use is allowed until 2019. It was one of the five national air to air FM tactics frequencies, however, those frequencies have been absorbed into the 73 channel National Air to Ground system. Air to ground use of the air to air FM tactics frequencies was allowed on those 5 frequencies and most geographical areas assigned them on a zone by zone basis to reduce interference, then assigned the remainder for air to air tactics on a zone basis as well. In California 170.0000 was assigned statewide and 3 frequencies were assigned to each forest to reduce interference. The 5th frequency, 167.950 was assigned to the BLM. 170.0000 is now air to ground Channel 28 in the National Air to Ground system and is used over a large portion of the U.S., especially in the east. I assume it is going to be replaced by 2018 or the users of it moved to other frequencies in the air to ground system. The feds in California wanted more air to ground frequencies due to interference between incidents and left 170.0000 out of the 7 frequency system that was developed to replace it. This was in anticipation of its authorization ending.

Nationally, with the exception of California, all air to air tactics are now being conducted on VHF AM frequencies. Cal Fire operates with FM air to air tactics and USFS Region 5 developed a FM air to air tactics system of 30 frequencies with 2 assigned to each National Forest, with the exception of the 3 assigned to the Angeles and Cleveland NF's.

It is important to remember that the air to air tactics and air to ground frequencies are assigned for initial attack only. If an incident grows larger, complexity increases or moves past the second 12 hour shift then it is an extended attack and new specially assigned frequencies must be used.

I've noticed that 170.0000 is often assigned for air to ground on extended attack incidents. After 2018 or 2019 this will not be the case. I can't remember if the authorization ends on January 1st or December 31st in 2019.