NM Wildfire Initial Attack Comm Plan

[zerg901]

NEW MEXICO RESOURCE MOBILIZATION PLAN

see approx page 17


Communications Plan:
Fire incidents that involve an RMP mobilization will often be rapidly developing and dynamic. It
is critical for safety and effective operations that local government resources are able to
communicate with each other, the incident, the involved dispatch center and other resources
while traveling to and arriving on the incident. For that reason, the New Mexico state fire
frequency (154.310 MHz) is designated as the standard travel and initial tactical frequency. All
apparatus is required to have functional P-25 compliant, VHF two-way radios that include this
frequency. In addition, it is strongly recommended that all apparatus have radios programmed
to the following New Mexico Initial Action Communications Plan.

yadda yadda - basically this -
Ch 1 - 154.31
Ch 2 - state forestry - 159.42 or 159.33
Ch 3 - state forestry car to car 159.225
Ch 4 to Ch 9 - federal wildfire dispatch centers across the state - simplex
Ch 10 - R3 Tac 1
Ch 11 - R3 Tac 2
Ch 12 - R3 Tac 3
Ch 13 - 168.35 or a/g
Ch 14 - a/g
Ch 15 - a/g
Ch 16 - 168.625

 

[es93546]

Arizona used to make a similar document available on their website, but the feds noticed that federal frequencies were included and the state took down the link. There used to be some links to cooperative agreements with frequency lists in annual operating plans. Nearly all of those now have the frequencies shown on an appendix document, that is not included on the online version. I heard from an acquaintance of mine who is still in the wildland fire profession that he has been to NIFC and met the person who is assigned to find the oversights we talked about in that other thread that got shut down. My acquaintance related that the man tracks the number and timing of hits to agency servers to find all the "leaks." This guy is quite good at what he does and enjoys finding the oversights to correct as soon as he can. Here is a quote from that private message:

" I literally met the person charged with ensuring those plans don't get OSINT published and, if they do, scrubbing them. It's all predicated on the increased traffic in the FTP servers or something. He actually stated this site was the root cause of this "additional duties as assigned" tasking."

OSINT = Open Source Intellligence. "This site" = Radio Reference.

You see I'm not crotchety. Now Lindsey might remove this message, but I wanted to let everyone know that the above PM reflects what I heard from a comm unit leader in the command post of a fire near town that I was assigned to after retirement as a member of the town's CERT organization. I don't intend to start another discussion that gets out of hand, I'm just relaying what I've heard directly and from one other person. I would not state what I have without valid sources.

 

[es93546]

I should also mention that when I lived and worked in New Mexico, including some time as a volunteer firefighter for the town I lived near and as an EMT that staffed the department's medic unit, 154.3100 had a ton of traffic on it, especially on Thursday nights, which seem to be the night of choice for weekly volunteer FD meetings and training. It is the night of choice for all the FD's in the eastern Sierra. In the late 70's, early 80's when I lived in New Mexico, 154.3100 almost sounded like CB radio, with people talking over each other. We could hear departments just north of Albuquerque and south for the towns along the Rio Grande River, from our higher elevation location. In those lower elevations they might not have heard each other. We could also hear traffic all the way north to Grants and Jemez. All this was simplex traffic.