Scott, thanks for the observations about NDF and others as far as radio is concerned. After posing the questions in my last post I took a little bit of time and looked up the websites of the Reno Fire Department and the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District. This because my next question is whether the VHF system of Truckee Mdws. was still being used as my understanding, based on reading this forum, was the two departments had merged. I found out that this is not quite true. They are in a cooperative agreement to share some services and functions. That may not be the actual title of the agreement, but it reads like a coop agreement so I will call it that.
I did not have time to read through the entire agreement as much of it had to do with personnel matters. My quick look did not find any wording regarding radio systems ,however, I would think there is some in the document somewhere. The highlights of the agreement are the designation of one chief, having a shared dispatch center, and setting up response areas that make more sense as far as station location that get rid of the inefficiencies caused by boundaries between them. There is a section that speaks to station location and building, plus ownership of the facilities. I don't remember the details of this last point.
The overall perception I gleaned in this quick look is that they are still two separate entities, but are sharing resources. This leaves me with the question, how is dispatching done when a fire is solely in the jurisdiction of one or the other. Do they just transmit the dispatch on the trunked system when it is entirely within the city of Reno? Is the VHF system used solely when the reverse is true? Do they simulcast everything? Does Truckee Mdws. have two sets of radios, both mobile and handheld as I would assume? I believe the trunked system is managed by the county and Truckee Mdws. is a county agency so one would think they switched over to the trunked system as it was being developed, but the talkgroups for fire look very much like the old 400 MHz system that Reno had. Now that I know the two departments still have some autonomy it changes what I had assumed about the radio systems.
Reno carrying VHF radios reminds me of L.A. County Fire where each apparatus is equipped with a VHF handheld or several. Almost all of their tactical frequencies are on VHF and command, dispatch, and response are on UHF. The county interfaces with the Forest Service and Ventura County quite frequently (many times per day) so they need to be able to communicate on VHF. When they form strike teams for out of county assignments they need VHF as well for both federal and state jurisdiction assignments. I would imagine that any fire department that responds to state and federal jurisdictions must equip themselves with at least a VHF handheld and possibly mobiles all the time.
I remember, when I first started with the Forest Service, that even when agencies had VHF handhelds of their own, that both the FS and the other agencies did not have enough channels in the crystal radios to work most of the NIFC frequencies. We all had to be issued NIFC cache handhelds in order to work the incident. Initial attack was a mess as we had to send runners to the crews of other agencies or had to call our dispatchers to relay tactical traffic. Communications with aircraft was difficult as there was usually only one field pack set (not a handheld in the early 70's) on what was then called "Air Net" , which was 168.625. It was used as an air-to-ground for that one pack set, otherwise we had to call dispatch and have them relay traffic to aircraft. Air net was also air dispatch as aircraft did not have the Wulfsburgs at the time and they could not dial in the local jurisdictions. As air net was the only common frequency between National Forests it was used as sort of a dispatchers intercom. This is one of the reasons the Forest Service developed the north and south dispatch nets in California because air net was so congested. We also ran local incident tactical on the Forest Net simplex and remote bases and repeater traffic would interrupt us. Now add to all this confusion was the differing command systems of the various agencies with the Forest Service running LFO (Large Fire Organization) and others running who knows what. We also worked with a lack of mutual aid agreements and sometimes had to beg to get units from a nearby station to respond and it was done on a case by case basis with financial and administrative people getting involved where they would often nix something because they were worried about liability and reimbursement issues. "Well it took you a long time to pay our bill the last time so I really don't want to get us involved with you again" types of answers would come back to us. Many of the people in command would have big egos and would not accept interagency help, and would take the chances of having a fire get bigger rather than call the next closest resource in. The phrase often used was "we will kill our own snakes!" These even happened between adjacent National Forests such as the time a fire was spotted on the eastern slope of one mountain where the line between the Coconino and Kaibab National Forests ran. The Kaibab had resources closer to the incident than the Coconino but the fire was on their side of the line. One engine and my patrol unit sat in a station 4 miles from the fire on the Kaibab side and watched the fire get bigger while the Coconino turned down our offer to respond during the time they were sending their initial attack engine from Flagstaff, some 12 miles away with their second in units located 15 and 17 miles away. We sat and watched the smoke grow from our vantage point. Talk about stupid!
As far as I'm concerned "the good old days" really stunk in firefighting. During my career I saw how the entire collection of fire agencies really formed into one service and the color of your uniform and truck no longer mattered as much. However, I ran across some interagency friction right up to the time I retired. Things like agencies giving the other agencies the worst locations in camp for crews and also giving them the worst busses and drivers. But all in all ICS really made a difference not only in actual incident management but in helping the development of more and more realistic mutual aid agreements, and even further in integrating everyone in to one fire service. One large factor in this last point was the common qualifications everyone has to have. We started going to the same training sessions, having cool ones after class was over, going out to dinner with each other, etc. This really broke down the barriers.
Crap! Another long story from a retired person. Sorry!
