Shingletown residents create radio communication for a fire blackout

[norcalscan]

I just spent lunch looking deeper at this - I didn't realize the sheer complexity of this (the website design didn't help me realize what all was actually clickable or actionable...). I just found seven pages of Q codes (at least FMT Mike 7, maybe FMT MIKE 8 will get it down to 5 pages) just to explain fire watch brevity codes. Brevity is not 7 pages of random 3-letter codes explaining various fire weather/watch criteria. There is a reason it is strict policy in California to use clear text in fire response, because it paints the best picture, most efficiently, in the heat of the moment, understood by everyone.

I just don't even know where to begin with all of this. Or if it's even worth it. It's dangerous, that's for sure. The mindset in Shingletown won't take too kindly to humbly standing by and yielding to a voice on the radio that "knows better than them", especially when they can talk back and tell them so. All one has to do is listen to the parents and grandparents on the sideline of a U8 soccer game. The ARES groups up here tend to go pretty deep and complex. It sort of works for them, but it doesn't come without some pretty intense arguments and rifts and lost friendships and ham repeaters that get ripped off the air to spite people. I see this sort of attitude often up here, and I see it spilling into this idea and "plan". All the tactical-this and format-that, 30 pages of self-importance guides that we need 4 laminated copies of in each family vehicle glovebox, the boat, the camper, and kitchen, to explain "tune to 154.570 to listen to the latest evac intel, pack up your car, and go"

It's dangerous. It's fun and games for those who like to do this stuff (ARES, CERT, community help etc.) but as soon as this became an idea to push onto the citizens, and hit KRCR Channel 7, THE flagship news channel up here, it just became a real dangerous mess. I hope and pray he can handle it all and program things correctly AND TRAIN PEOPLE CORRECTLY on a very complex system, all as one person, with one telephone. I get his idea, his passion for taking action instead of wringing hands, his support of the community and people, but I really hope this doesn't get off the ground and instead stays with just the folks that enjoy this sort of stuff.

sorry for the soap box rant. I didn't realize this was brewing in my backyard and I haven't digested it all yet.

 

[ke6gcv]

I just spent lunch looking deeper at this - I didn't realize the sheer complexity of this (the website design didn't help me realize what all was actually clickable or actionable...). I just found seven pages of Q codes (at least FMT Mike 7, maybe FMT MIKE 8 will get it down to 5 pages) just to explain fire watch brevity codes. Brevity is not 7 pages of random 3-letter codes explaining various fire weather/watch criteria. There is a reason it is strict policy in California to use clear text in fire response, because it paints the best picture, most efficiently, in the heat of the moment, understood by everyone.

I just don't even know where to begin with all of this. Or if it's even worth it. It's dangerous, that's for sure. The mindset in Shingletown won't take too kindly to humbly standing by and yielding to a voice on the radio that "knows better than them", especially when they can talk back and tell them so. All one has to do is listen to the parents and grandparents on the sideline of a U8 soccer game. The ARES groups up here tend to go pretty deep and complex. It sort of works for them, but it doesn't come without some pretty intense arguments and rifts and lost friendships and ham repeaters that get ripped off the air to spite people. I see this sort of attitude often up here, and I see it spilling into this idea and "plan". All the tactical-this and format-that, 30 pages of self-importance guides that we need 4 laminated copies of in each family vehicle glovebox, the boat, the camper, and kitchen, to explain "tune to 154.570 to listen to the latest evac intel, pack up your car, and go"

It's dangerous. It's fun and games for those who like to do this stuff (ARES, CERT, community help etc.) but as soon as this became an idea to push onto the citizens, and hit KRCR Channel 7, THE flagship news channel up here, it just became a real dangerous mess. I hope and pray he can handle it all and program things correctly AND TRAIN PEOPLE CORRECTLY on a very complex system, all as one person, with one telephone. I get his idea, his passion for taking action instead of wringing hands, his support of the community and people, but I really hope this doesn't get off the ground and instead stays with just the folks that enjoy this sort of stuff.

sorry for the soap box rant. I didn't realize this was brewing in my backyard and I haven't digested it all yet.

So very true, norcalscan!

I think I said it before but I'll say it again. This guy is pushing this onto the people of Shingletown. Almost a "take it or else" kind of action in my opinion!

I don't know... This is a disaster in itself waiting to happen, in my opinion.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I think the better option would to find out the best FRS radios that you can leave plugged in to charge, and tell everyone to get those and a basic analog scanner and just post up the frequencies that people should monitor.

I would split the area into zones with an “assigned” FRS for each neighborhood and then, hopefully, in each area you have a ham operator willing to act as leader for that zone who would act as a relay for important info. Each zone just needs to worry about their zone so if there is an evacuation or info that needs to be passed, you contact the zone leader and they pass the info.

 

[ke6gcv]

I think the better option would to find out the best FRS radios that you can leave plugged in to charge, and tell everyone to get those and a basic analog scanner and just post up the frequencies that people should monitor.

I would split the area into zones with an “assigned” FRS for each neighborhood and then, hopefully, in each area you have a ham operator willing to act as leader for that zone who would act as a relay for important info. Each zone just needs to worry about their zone so if there is an evacuation or info that needs to be passed, you contact the zone leader and they pass the info.

I like this idea!

 

[norcalscan]

I would split the area into zones with an “assigned” FRS for each neighborhood and then, hopefully, in each area you have a ham operator willing to act as leader for that zone who would act as a relay for important info. Each zone just needs to worry about their zone so if there is an evacuation or info that needs to be passed, you contact the zone leader and they pass the info.

I agree. Keeping it on FRS will drastically lower the complexity of this mess, as well as remove the very real risk of jamming public safety channels, and jamming their own channel with mundane questions, "am I on the right channel for my neighborhood? Should we evacuate? Is this real? Is this IT?" And before some of us come back and say "but FRS has a very short range" I will say if you didn't live through the Camp Fire evac, then you won't understand some of us will have absolutely no problem putting FRS into a 40watt UHF radio loading a Diamond X50 and helping the community GTFO of dodge with timely intel. That's the "broadcast" or "one direction" solution I was mentioning earlier. There are some rules that can be broken and the middle finger given to the FCC afterward in the name of life safety. Every citizen buying a Beofang and putting in FRS, MURS, amateur and public safety freqs, is NOT the rule to break.

Agreed - if the community actually acts on this, and then starts to expect this to work when the community is in threat, it will create a new disaster of its own if/when it fails. A community-wide system like this requires understanding much more than a technical comm plan. You gotta understand human behavior, psychology, crisis behavior, what humans will do in pure survival mode. We, as a society, are lazy. We will see this as a turn-key solution. We'll buy it, play with it for a few days, maybe do one net, then set it aside until we remember it's there with the firestorm looming. We'll expect it to compensate for our lack of planning. No amount of UNDERLINED CAPITAL RED TEXT warning on a website will make us plan or act differently. It requires continuing investment and planning, still taking ownership 4 years from now and explaining to the community how to replace radios, batteries, updated programming, etc. You have to be able to convey a complex system to the lowest common denominator, something I can see very quickly this person doesn't know how to do, based on his guides and "overviews" etc. I'm a technical person and can absorb complex systems quickly. I'm still overwhelmed by the scope of this. I can pick out the important tidbits and see the raw simple plan/idea, but it is buried under so much noise.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

Yeah, that’s why I said FRS, because it’s short range. You can monitor everything else around you with the scanner, but there is no need to talk across town. When ARES gets the word to tell a zone to go, the contact the zone leader and they can relay it down the everyone on FRS. The best part too is like you said, if the leader has a more “flexible” radio, they can punch in the zone channel and just blast out to everyone, or even go mobile in their car. And everyone needs to understand that, be prepared to go at any moment but sit tight until you get the word so other neighborhoods in more eminent danger can evacuate.

Another idea too is to establish a “panic” frequency/tone pair on the 2m band and program it into scanners and tell everyone that if you hear that come up on your scanner, just do what it says. It would be more helpful on scanners that can set alerts noises on certain objects so it gets your attention. You could also use 2 tone alerting for FTO scanners or those that have radios capable of that.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I’m thinking of doing something similar but on a MUCH smaller scale for friends and family only. I’m kinda worried about the talk of planned blackouts this summer in California, so I’m thinking about getting my GMRS license and some radios and giving them to my parents and GF (technically not family per the law but soon enough) and tell them to just have them on and waiting so if we have a serious power outage, we can stay in touch and plan. I really wish I could get them to get their ham tickets though but the ladies just can’t get a grip on the technical stuff.

 

[mikewazowski]

I'm sure there's a lot of people that would be interested but his rigid radio protocols are going to scare a lot of them away.

 

[zz0468]

I'm sure there's a lot of people that would be interested but his rigid radio protocols are going to scare a lot of them away.

I'm of the opinion that the public safety officials in the area should have a talk with the guy. What he's proposing is so ludicrous it borders on dangerous.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

I'm sure there's a lot of people that would be interested but his rigid radio protocols are going to scare a lot of them away.

That’s what I’m saying. You need to keep it simple. Tell them to buy particular rechargeable FRS radio, put it on a specific channel and just leave it alone. If there is an emergency, someone will tell them what to do.

 

[Stupidfatkid]

Agreed. The simplest plan is always the best plan. Trying to decipher the "Radio Communications Plan" reminded me of a Mike Tyson quote.

 

[N4GIX]

That’s what I’m saying. You need to keep it simple. Tell them to buy particular rechargeable FRS radio, put it on a specific channel and just leave it alone. If there is an emergency, someone will tell them what to do.

I've kept things very simple here in my area of North Hammond, Indiana. I bought 100 WLN KD-1 16 channel HT's and pre-programmed them for 15 FRS frequencies, and 1 GMRS repeater output (receive only). So far I've recruited 42 neighbors who happily joined in and paid me $10 each (what I paid). These are very robust UHF pocket sized transceivers that won't break anyone's bank should they get damaged! They are not FPP, so I'm not worried about folks re-programming them.

I instruct them to leave them on channel 1 (the GMRS repeater), and in the charger full-time so they can monitor 24/7. The repeater controller is able to be switches to a specific CTCSS tone so they won't be annoyed by the regular users. Once each week I hold a net so folks can check their radios to make sure they are working. I send out an alert tone to get their attention, then announce which FRS channel # to switch to. I then proceed to "call the net" by Unit Numbers. Once the short net is concluded (about 15 minutes) I make sure to remind then to switch back to Channel 1 and put the radio back on the charger.

If anyone needs to contact me, they can do so on Channel 2. I have a radio here that I monitor full-time, or they can call me on my cell phone.

Since I am a member of RACES and have contacts with the county's Homeland Security EOC, I can quickly forward any traffic directly to them on their dedicated 70cm repeater. I also have the ability to check in to the state's HF net if called for.

Network protocol is structured using mostly "plain language." KISS is the guiding principle! For the past 18 months it is still holding together at least.

 

[PrivatelyJeff]

NICE! What’s the range on them?

 

[N4GIX]

NICE! What’s the range on them?

In this old neighborhood with most of the house dating from the 1918-30 era, we have about a 14 block radius, encompassing ~140 homes. This is of particular concern since they are nearly all of wood construction, so any house fire could rapidly spiral out of control quickly. For example, all the lots are 100' deep, but only 25' wide. There is only 2.5 feet between my house and my neighbor. That is our principle concern, but tornados are also worrisome!

I am making some progress in getting the city involved in order to promote other communities to form their own watch groups. We could then have the group leaders communicate via the GMRS repeater to pass traffic back and forth. They of course would have to get their own GMRS license, but that's small potatoes in the long run. Simplicity and safety are our watchwords.

 

[ko6jw_2]

The problems in Paradise were mostly due to the speed at which the Camp Fire moved. They actually had an evacuation plan, but it failed because there was no time for the orderly evacuation that the plan called for.

As an ARES District Emergency Coordinator and having observed many emergencies there are two problems. The first is getting the word out to people who need to evacuate immediately. The second is providing information to the public about the emergency. When you lose electricity and have no access to radio or TV or the internet the situation can become critical. However, that situation will not be made better by having a bunch of people with Baofeng radios all talking at once. Never mind the fact that few if any of them will really know what's going on.

If you need to evacuate you don't have time to mess with an HT that you don't know how to use and probably has a dead battery. Just leave.

During a major brush fire we had a group of hams (not in ARES) who decided to have an "emergency net" The traffic consisted of misinformation, editorials on fire fighting and the shortcomings of the fire service, and other helpful information about what one guy had for breakfast at IHOP. The problem with all of this was that they jammed anyone the didn't want on their net and the misinformation they spread could have actually endangered people who acted upon it. After the fact they were informed by the repeater trustee that any repetition would not be tolerated. It hasn't happened again.

In this county we have cell phone alerts that the county can trigger. A lot of the time they are not well targeted and tell people to evacuate who are nowhere near the danger zone. Even so you have to have a cell phone. Many elderly and poor folks don't have them. Cell towers can also fail. My solution is low tech. I advocate a system of warning sirens as are used in tornado prone areas. No, you won't know exactly what is going on, but you will know that there is an emergency and that you need to take action.

Using unlicensed radios that are not type accepted is not a solution.

 

[brushfire21]

I like the concept but it’s way overly thought out and someone needs to be working with the incident management team and giving out good quality evac information. The one way information is important and what’s needed. However having GMRS / HAM repeaters for family communications would be bad. But dealing with potential hundreds of users all at once could be problematic. Another technology that isn’t being used much is the NWS/NOAA weather receivers and alerting. These could be utilized more and they work as long as a transmitter is within range.

 

[ko6jw_2]

Sometimes low tech is best. It is much more important to get information out to people than it is for them to all talk. In my area a local mountain top community has a low power (10 watts) AM transmitter on 1040Khz. It broadcasts traffic and weather information as well as public service announcements. However, it can, in emergencies, broadcast information the community. Easy and efficient.

Another low tech solution are warning sirens. They are used for storm warnings in the Midwest and they could be used for fire warnings in the West. They don't tell you exactly what's happening, but they get your attention. Then you can tune to the low power AM frequency to get more info.

 

[zerg901]

paradise california siren - Google Search

Paradise CA is doing something with sirens now

 

[mmckenna]

Good lord, the formatting of those documents is awful. Bold, red, underlined, my eyes hurt after a few seconds of reading.

Interesting that he put effort into making sure others knew that transmitting on amateur frequencies without a license was not allowed, but he and his amateur buddies actively encourage using non-type accepted radios on GMRS frequencies with no mention of licensing, rules, as well as MURS.

And if he really is a practicing attorney, he should know better.

I think the term "whacker" nailed it.

 

[KevinC]

I just spent lunch looking deeper at this - I didn't realize the sheer complexity of this (the website design didn't help me realize what all was actually clickable or actionable...). I just found seven pages of Q codes (at least FMT Mike 7, maybe FMT MIKE 8 will get it down to 5 pages) just to explain fire watch brevity codes. Brevity is not 7 pages of random 3-letter codes explaining various fire weather/watch criteria. There is a reason it is strict policy in California to use clear text in fire response, because it paints the best picture, most efficiently, in the heat of the moment, understood by everyone.

Did he say QWS or QWF? I think it was QWF so let's not worry about....