Bureau of Land Management Nationwide Administrative Unit Map

[Paysonscanner]

I have a question at the end of this post I would like to get feedback on.

Hey, I thought that if I posted a U.S. Forest Service map showing all the ranger districts, why not post a map of the BLM's nationwide State-District-Field Office map? Like the Forest Service ranger district map this BLM map can help listeners figure out some of the radio traffic and callsign numbers. The BLM has a 4 number callsign for nearly everything with very few exceptions. The numbering system uses the district number for the first digit, the unit is next the next digit, which can be district office staff or field offices, the third digit indicates the management function (resources, recreation, lands/realty, oil & gas and others) and the last number is the individual or apparatus. For example, in Arizona there are 4 districts, Arizona Strip (1), Phoenix (2), Colorado River (3) and Gila (4). The district manager in Phoenix would be 2000, the Hassayampa Field Office manager would be 2100 and the Lower Sonoran Field Office Manager would be 2200. An individual might have a callsign of 2240 and the 4 might be recreation with this person being in charge of it and supervises 2241, 2242, etc. The Lower Sonoran Field Office has numbers starting with 2200, the Agua Fria National Monument begins with 2300 and the Sonoran Desert National Monument begins with 2400.

Anyway, here is a link to the BLM national map,

BLM Administrative Boundaries Map

Here is a link to more localized maps, some showing admin boundaries in a state. It is tough to find anything at this site because the maps are listed chronologically and not geographically or in alphabetical order. In spite of that Dad and I have found some interesting maps here. Dad is a map nerd, but then he started as a seasonal survey aid in 1949 and as a civil engineer in 1951. My dear late husband was a map nerd and civil engineer also. Not only are these maps hard to find, there are 58 pages of them.

BLM :Maps

My dad noticed that the RR database listings don't show the BLM units correctly and have left off the district level of the agency. He reminds us that dispatching and frequency assignments, as well as callsign numbering are based on the district level. All that is listed is field offices and someone called some of the districts, field offices. I would like to know if people think agencies like the BLM should be listed using the levels that the agencies use for line officer delegation and geographical units. Without the district level being shown it is confusing trying to figure out callsigns and district radio nets. I have the listings of numbers for a few state offices and if I submit them along with the frequency info it will help listeners. This paragraph was dictated by Dad and he is a detail nerd as well.

I've gathered enough information to update a lot of the federal database pages, which takes time. A lot of these federal pages are out of date. I'm afraid that when I submit the info it won't reflect the official agency information I have.

 

[MtnBiker2005]

Maybe you can just post your info on the forum.
So everyone can read the info on how it should be read and understand it better.

 

[DaveNF2G]

Any agency should be listed according to how the agency is actually structured, if known.

The problem with RRDB (or any user-supported resource) is that some information is outside the knowledge of those submitting data. If an agency listing needs to be restructured, the best way to deal with it is to submit the corrected data.

 

[drdispatch]

I don't know if there is a Wiki page for the BLM, but if there is that info would be right at home there. (And if there isn't, then you could get it off to a great start.)

 

[zerg901]

Based on what I see in current agency radio channel lists, it seems that the fire organizations of the BLM and USFS have functionally merged at this time. Fire dispatch is being done by regional wildfire dispatch offices that dispatch both BLM and USFS fire units under "closest response" policies. (The 'closest response policies' are effectively nationwide boundary drop agreements). Zones (channel banks) in USFS and BLM fire radios commonly have both BLM and USFS radio channels. 'Air to Ground' and 'Air to Air' freqs are shared by all wildland fire agencies.

Maybe any updates to the RRFB should be based upon the Dispatch Office scheme. For example - here are the dispatch offices under the Great Basin (Fire) Coordination Center - Great Basin Coordination Center

My comments are primarily oriented towards wildfire operations. But I am pretty sure that many of these wildfire dispatch centers also handle the law enforcement radio communications for the BLM and USFS. If the law enforcement radio traffic actually runs mostly on local sheriff channels or agency statewide LE command posts - then we have another wrinkle to contend with.

 

[Paysonscanner]

I don't know if there is a Wiki page for the BLM, but if there is that info would be right at home there. (And if there isn't, then you could get it off to a great start.)

I haven't figured wiki out at all. I looked at it a couple times and OH BOY it was non-straightforward. My dad actually types up some of the submissions made from this account. He's 92 and he's figured how to do so fairly well, but he's also looked at wiki and says "who's responsible for that!" I'm not really sure when I can take the time to take it on.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Maybe you can just post your info on the forum.
So everyone can read the info on how it should be read and understand it better.

I'm not sure what info should be posted to the forum, although I have a little bit more to post here as far as maps.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Based on what I see in current agency radio channel lists, it seems that the fire organizations of the BLM and USFS have functionally merged at this time. Fire dispatch is being done by regional wildfire dispatch offices that dispatch both BLM and USFS fire units under "closest response" policies. (The 'closest response policies' are effectively nationwide boundary drop agreements). Zones (channel banks) in USFS and BLM fire radios commonly have both BLM and USFS radio channels. 'Air to Ground' and 'Air to Air' freqs are shared by all wildland fire agencies.

Maybe any updates to the RRFB should be based upon the Dispatch Office scheme. For example - here are the dispatch offices under the Great Basin (Fire) Coordination Center - Great Basin Coordination Center

My comments are primarily oriented towards wildfire operations. But I am pretty sure that many of these wildfire dispatch centers also handle the law enforcement radio communications for the BLM and USFS. If the law enforcement radio traffic actually runs mostly on local sheriff channels or agency statewide LE command posts - then we have another wrinkle to contend with.

The interagency dispatch centers in most of the west are not doing any law enforcement dispatching. Dad and I have read some notes from dispatcher conferences where the subject has been brought up. Outside California the dispatchers don't want anything to do with this area of dispatching. In California they have been doing it for decades so they intend to continue. One illustration of this is that the NPS is a member quite a few dispatch centers for fire management, but not for law enforcement. Where I used to live in CA we could hear several parks from home and all had their own LE dispatch. Some of the smaller parks were dispatched by the larger ones. Example, Pinnacles NM used Sequoia Kings NP for their dispatching of law enforcement rangers. Lassen NP uses Yosemit for LE and Susanville for fire. Both Yosemite and Sequoia Kings had their own fire dispatching as well because of their size and workload, Yosemite even had their own fire network with many repeaters.

The fire organizations for the BLM & USFS are working closely in some places, but merging is too strong of a word in most. Although in some places the fire management officers of a national forest also are such for the adjacent BLM district or field office. Some battelion chiefs are in charge of both BLM and USFS fire resources, like engines, water tenders & dozers. Crews, especially hot shot crews answer to their own agency.

I don't think the database should list agencies by dispatch center. Fire is not the only thing these agencies do. There is plenty of traffic by people working in recreation, grazing, etc. But, these agencies share air to ground, air-air, air guard and flight following frequencies and should be listed in a catagory just for them, rather than duplicate them for each BLM, USFS and NPS unit. I finished a large submission for the Utah interagency dispatches 2 or 3 days ago. I noticed how well this was done for the Montana federal page and wondered why all the states are not done this way.

The level of detail in radio group listings that I've come across is more than is needed on the DB, at least I think so. I'm new, but had oodles of time this summer in the evenings to explore the database and my late hubby's extensive notes.

I have more BLM info that I will soon post.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Any agency should be listed according to how the agency is actually structured, if known.

The problem with RRDB (or any user-supported resource) is that some information is outside the knowledge of those submitting data. If an agency listing needs to be restructured, the best way to deal with it is to submit the corrected data.

Thank you! When I look at state, county and city listings they are done this way as well. State highway patrols are shown so that all the local offices are divided up by regions, divisions and then local offices last. Sometimes these regions or divisions have common frequencies just for a region and listing local offices by themselves would make this rather tricky to get a clear picture. I think of how the California Highway Patrol is listed in California for example. For the BLM sometimes districts have one frequency and are dispatched by the same comm center so when only the field offices are listed the frequencies are duplicated several times and who disptatches who is not clear at all.

Not only do submitters not know everything about the agencies they are submitting info for, the database administrators can't possibly keep track of everything. They are working with the military, who use a lot of frequencies, to the FAA, to city public works and then to amusement parks, even plumbers. They must have a huge variety of submissions and many of those are written by people who don't understand what they are hearing. Many thanks to those DB admins they really help us all. Some listings are very good making it pretty clear some submitters have their poop together.

 

[ecps92]

Wiki is used edited, many of those pages were created based on ICS205 data was found in public access, now more restricted
None of it is official and much is left [as the RRDB] to the submittor/user [Alpha Tags, usage etc]

I haven't figured wiki out at all. I looked at it a couple times and OH BOY it was non-straightforward. My dad actually types up some of the submissions made from this account. He's 92 and he's figured how to do so fairly well, but he's also looked at wiki and says "who's responsible for that!" I'm not really sure when I can take the time to take it on.

 

[Paysonscanner]

I have more detail for the BLM admin organization. I'm going to post maps for each state office. For a refresher here is how line officer delegation works in the BLM.

BLM Director - Washington Office
State Office Director (12 of those)
District Manager, includes National Monument Managers for the larger NM's
Field Office Manager, can indlude the smaller National Monuments and things like National Conservation Areas
Field Stataion Manager or Staff Supervisor (Supervisor is not a line officer)

Field Stations are established mostly due to distance, workload and resources. Example, the Arctic District in Alaska (Fairbanks) has a field station in Nome. The Utah Color Country District, Cedar City Field Office has a field station in Hanksville called the Henry Mountain Field Station. It is located in one of the most wonderfully remote areas in the lower 48 states so it takes a lot of time to get there from Cedar City.

At all levels there are staff branches. Those include Fire and Aviation; Range Management (grazing); Recreation and Visitor Services; Lands, Realty, Surveying: Archaeology; and National Conservation Lands.

Now for radio callsigns,

Staff.

1641 The one refers to the district, the six refers to the field office, the four refers to the branch and the one refers to the person, with the lower the number the higher the rank. In this example 1641 would be supervised by 1640. In this example 1 is the Central California District (El Dorado Hills, CA), 6 is the Bakersfield Field Office (Bakersfield), 4 is Recreation and Visitor Services, and 1 is the person just below the branch supervisor.

Fire Apparatus.

WY-HDD 1603. WY refers to the state office using standard postal service abbreviations. HDD refers to the BLM District within Wyoming. The 1 refers to district number. The 6 is the engine type, with wildland engines being Types 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (7's are patrol engines). Here is the photo of this engine.



This standard of numbering started about around 2012, give or take a year or two. Engines already given a number were not required to be renumbered and new lettering/numbering put on the engine. Depending on use, engines in the federal wildland fire managment agencies are replaced at 10 or greater intervals. This numbering scheme will be used on all new engines after the 2012 standarization. The three letter designator is from the U.S. fire/emergency services designator list. I will post a link to that in a post below.

Here is another from Arizona,



In this case this engine is stationed on the Colorado River District in Arizona (district #3) and is a Type 6 engine. I'm not sure what the next 6 refers to. In some states that is the field office #, but the Colorado River District only has 3 field offices (Kingman, Lake Havasu and Yuma) so 6 doesn't fit that. The 5 is the individual engine. Some districts have station numbers, which are located some distance from the district office and can have one or more engines. Sometimes I think the third number is a station number. I can't get on the WildCad page this morning to check on engines in other states, so I don't know.

I like this system as on large fires you can tell where resources have come from. I haven't shown anything from California, because they established a standard within that state in the early 1980's when dad was still working. They didn't know that 3 letter designators would come to each state so they start everything with a 3. Three is the number of the state office in the BLM's 12 state offices. The second number in CA is the district #, the third number is the Engine Type where they lumped anything below a Type 3 into the number 4 and the last number is the individual engine number. They lumped as they only had Type 3 and Type 6 engines at the time.

Thanks to dad for writing this, I just proof read it. He reminds us that civil engineers went on fires in "the olden days" of the Forest Service.,1949-1987 in his case. Pretty good computer work for someone born in 1927, huh?

EDIT** As you can see it's pretty hard to figure out how BLM personnel and appartus are from without knowing the district level. This is why dad seems so adament about making sure the district's are shown in the RR DB. He wonders why the DB federal pages in California have the districts listed, but not in many other states.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Dad says he thinks he remembers what the third number is in BLM apparatus designators (callsigns). He says the BLM not only has engines, but water tenders, dozers and crews as well. Some states use the thrid number to designates these. He has a fuzzy memory of being in California on a fire seeing dozers with a 3rd # of 9 and water tenders with an 8. He is looking at pictures on Google, but can't find any dozers with numbers on them there.

This should be interesting stuff to died in the wool fire buffs. Hubby fit this category when he was alive.

 

[Paysonscanner]

OK, for fire buffs again, here is the national unit identifier list. Follow this link and click on "Unit Identifiers." Everything is grouped first into the 10 Geographic Area Coordination Centers (examples, Southwest, Great Basin, Rocky Mtns, etc.).

National Unit Identifier Reports

The NWCG in the title stands for "National Wildfire Coordinating Group" or some such. I don't know much about it.

Here is one highlight of the identifiers. For federal agencies the last letter represents the following agencies:

F - U.S. Forest Service (as in national Forest)
D - Bureau of Land Management (as in District)
R - U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (as in national wildlife Refuge)
P - National Park Service (as in national Park) all units end with a P even if a national monument, national historic site, etc.
A - Bureau of Indian Affairs (as in Agency) the BIA has regions and then "agencies" for the larger reservations or groups of smaller ones.
U - Units (as in Cal Fire operational Units) one exception, the USFS Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit ends in a U.
S - State forestry agencies outside CA. Usually shown like "N1S," where the number referes to a district or region number and the first letter refers to a state. The N in this example stands for New Mexico.

These are all wildland fire management/suppression and land management agencies. Some other federal agencies have designators as well.

L - Bureau of Reclamation. They have lands around some reserviors in the western U.S. Sometimes they can provide heavy equipment and soemtimes BOR lands burn.
W - National Weather Service. Large fires and other weather related disaster have forecasters and equipment located at the incident command post.
G - U.S. Geological Service. I don't really know how they fit in. Perhaps for earthquake incidents.
Q - Department of Defense. This one is not consistent as sometimes theirs will end in other letters such as B for base or A for Air Force Base. When they end in Q it is usually a 4 letter identifier.

I don't know too much more about this, I know that late hubby printed it out once every year or three. It would keep the printer active for long periods. He had it in a notebook, would see appartus, note the identifier painted on the side and look it up.

Note that local fire departments are listed and theat they can end in any letter, including the letters above. Fire departments usually have the identifier on each apparatus. Some of this is really confusing to me. In health care we had enough abbreviations and designators of our own, enough to make your brain explode. Combine that with the legendary poor writing of physicians . . . . . !

 

[Paysonscanner]

SORRY! I didn't see a delete option for the posts I made, even in the short edit time frame. I hope a moderator can delete these. The attachments didn't work out. I didn't realize that hubby didn't edit the maps in his file so some of them were too small. I'll try to post later.

 

[zerg901]

1. The Radio Reference Data Base (RRDB) that I see online at radioreference.com is organized at the county level. But State freqs and Federal freqs are not usually shown at the county level in the RRDB usually. Except for the federal TRSs. [Middlesex County, Massachusetts (MA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference - Middlesex County in Massachusetts - Bedford VA Hosp is listed under Bedford - Concord State Prison is listed under Concord - but no 'non TRS' listings here for Hanscom AFB - no listing for State EMA VHF system - etc]

2. I am pretty sure that the downloadable RRDB used for programming scanners strives to just list each "radio usage entry" once. For example the RRDB does not list 154.28 for every FD that has a license on 154.28. But I am sure that it does show in some FD listings.

3. It might be worthwhile to ask the admins for advice before putting alot of work into this.

4. The Angeles National Forest (NF) in Calfornia now shows 4 repeater pairs in the RRDB. I am pretty sure that the Forest Net is used 99% by fire units. I also am pretty sure that the Law Net is only used for LE tactical type comms. No idea what Service Net is used for. Apparently Admin Net handles the natural resources and engineering traffic - plus LE dispatch. Maybe Angeles LE Net and Angeles Service Net use the same freqs as LE Net and Service Net on the Cleveland Natl Forest. But Forest Net and Admin Net use different freqs than on the Cleveland NF. To find this info one has to go to the Statewide Page and then drill down quite a ways under the Federal listings.

5. If I had a Home Patrol 2 in Los Angeles County I guess I would want to enter my zip code and then be given a few options. Do you also want - State Police - State Highways - Angeles NF - etc? Not sure if it works that way now or not. Perhaps it involves the range setting also. ?????

 

[DaveNF2G]

Yes, zerg901 points out an issue that I had forgotten about that further complicates listing large agencies in the DB. It is not a flaw in the DB but it is cooked into the design. Only counties are organized by county. State and federal agencies are organized according to needs that cross county (and state) lines.

 

[Paysonscanner]

1. The Radio Reference Data Base (RRDB) that I see online at radioreference.com is organized at the county level. But State freqs and Federal freqs are not usually shown at the county level in the RRDB usually. Except for the federal TRSs. [Middlesex County, Massachusetts (MA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference - Middlesex County in Massachusetts - Bedford VA Hosp is listed under Bedford - Concord State Prison is listed under Concord - but no 'non TRS' listings here for Hanscom AFB - no listing for State EMA VHF system - etc]

2. I am pretty sure that the downloadable RRDB used for programming scanners strives to just list each "radio usage entry" once. For example the RRDB does not list 154.28 for every FD that has a license on 154.28. But I am sure that it does show in some FD listings.

3. It might be worthwhile to ask the admins for advice before putting alot of work into this.

4. The Angeles National Forest (NF) in Calfornia now shows 4 repeater pairs in the RRDB. I am pretty sure that the Forest Net is used 99% by fire units. I also am pretty sure that the Law Net is only used for LE tactical type comms. No idea what Service Net is used for. Apparently Admin Net handles the natural resources and engineering traffic - plus LE dispatch. Maybe Angeles LE Net and Angeles Service Net use the same freqs as LE Net and Service Net on the Cleveland Natl Forest. But Forest Net and Admin Net use different freqs than on the Cleveland NF. To find this info one has to go to the Statewide Page and then drill down quite a ways under the Federal listings.

5. If I had a Home Patrol 2 in Los Angeles County I guess I would want to enter my zip code and then be given a few options. Do you also want - State Police - State Highways - Angeles NF - etc? Not sure if it works that way now or not. Perhaps it involves the range setting also. ?????

zerg, I have asked some of the editiors and so far no reponse. I think there is a database administration forum somewhere on this site. About 4-6 weeks ago while I was in CA fixing up a house, I think I saw it. Maybe I'll post there and get some opinions. I think a lot of very good info would be lost if I can't submit it because of some opinions about format. I don't have a Home Patrol 2. I don't know how that works. I know late hubby and I bought a lot of printed directories, some from Police Call, some from Bob Kelty (great stuff for CA) and then the best were done by Dan Rollman. He had seperate sections for federal agencies, state agencies and then by county. I'm still using the Arizona edition and penciling some changes in for the small counties cause he has the stuff so well organized. Some of the info he has is printed right by the radio frequencies, things about unit numbering, fire station locations that don't belong on the same page on the RR DB. I've used the DB to download frequencies to start building scanner files, just like my husband did, who taught me how. I guess station numbers, fire department numbering in a county and such is supposed to go on wiki pages. I don't think I will ever figure out wiki so I won't be able to write the great little details Rollman included in his books.

As for number 4 of your post, don't assume. I've listened to law net in the southern and central Sierra of CA as we could get 3 national forests from our Sierra foothill home. LE net was not used for tactical traffic only. A law enforcement officer might stay on that net all day long, all status changes, all calls for service, running plates and driver licenses, checking warrants, etc. It was used to take as much LE traffic off the other nets. Service nets were built for dispatch-to-incident communications to keep such traffic off the forest nets, this before cell phones and remote computer linking replaced much the need for service net. There are places where cell and satelitte phones don't work, just like the GPS blind spots hubby and I found all over the Sierra when backpacking. The topography of the Sierra can be rather dramatic, where we only got one satellite on the GPS and sometimes none at all, for hours. So service nets are still getting funded. Having all that traffic between dispatch and incident allowed the forest and admin nets to function, more or less normally. One more net on a forest is good as sometimes a ranger district or two might be switched to service for normal traffic, or if the incident isn't getting a Type 1 or Type 2 national team, service might function as a command for extended attack fires that use only a local team (Type 3, 4, 5). If there is a big lightning event, they may put each ranger district on a different net due to the abundance of traffic. This paragraph is a paraphase of a couple of pages of notes my husband took when he was on some big fires, sitting in camp at the comm unit on standby with a structural engine that was on call in case the fire started moving toward a private land subdivision.

The Angeles is a very active forest, with tons of admin traffic for recreation, for rec & resource management personnel tracking, and for fire. One ranger district had more personnel and apparatus than 2-3 entire national forests in places like Wyoming, Montana, Utah . . . . Dad says that you can get more experience on that forest in 5 years than people in other places get in an entire career.

I haven't found what you described "one has to go to the Statewide Page and then drill down quite a ways under the Federal listings." If someone in an eastern state puts a national park unit or a small national forest in the county pages, you're faced with trying to find it in one of the state's 200 counties when you don't have a good map with you and have no idea what county that federal unit is in. With the unit listed on a federal page you just do something like open the Indiana page, scroll to "U.S. Federal Government" move down the page to Forest Service to find the Hoosier National Forest and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore a whole lot quicker than getting mixed up in county pages.

 

[Paysonscanner]

zerg, I know what you are saying about mutual aid frequencies like 154.2800. However, if it is left out of an individual fire department's lisiting, you might find yourself in a situation where there is an active fire, something bad happens and they say for all the ladders to switch to "Channel 10" and you have no idea what frequency channel 10 is. Then later you find it was 154.2800 and channel 11 was 154.2650 and 13 was 154.295. If the list you are scanning doesn't include those frequenices, cause you used the RRDB for that county and Channels 10, 11 and 13 were left off the page, because they are listed somewhere else. You might be on a road trip in a town 5 states away and unfamiliar with the frequencies used there.

When my husband put together files for CA, NV, UT and AZ, where we traveled the most, he might have 168.3500 entered 6 times, because 6 national parks might have it as a tactical, but in Yosemite it might be channel 5, Death Valley in channel 3, Grand Canyon in channel 9, Zion in channel 4 . . . . . When you are in that park and some NPS employee says "switch to channel 5" and you want to follow the situtation you want to have the full channel plan in your radio. I guess you can put it in every list with national parks, but you can't distinquish 168.3500 from 163.1000 from 168.6125 from others. You need those channel numbers to follow what you are hearing.

 

[Paysonscanner]

Zerg, by the way, I was looking for a VA hospital in an Atlantic coast state one time. I could not find it in the federal listings and after trying to guess at what county it was in, I gave up after the 12th county. I was in an airport minus maps that had counties shown on them. I never did find that frequency while I was in the state. As a nurse, I really wanted to hear a VA hospital as we didn't have any near us in our part of CA, at least not close enough to hear portable to portable traffic.

 

[Paysonscanner]

I'm going to try to attach maps for each BLM State Office. I hope it works this time! I will follow the BLM's listings of states. They do it alphabettically when assigning state office numbers.