Yup, I've seen that and have Cal Fire radio load printouts that show that. The left and right hemispheres of my brain are not that quick to work with each other anymore.
Current Wildland Fire Frequencies in California
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Yup, I've seen that and have Cal Fire radio load printouts that show that. The left and right hemispheres of my brain are not that quick to work with each other anymore.
Calfire does have portable repeater capability on command channels other than CMD11. They're currently being used in BTU/TGU Lightning Complex to fill in some gaps the fixed infrastructure can't hear.
I believe, but not 100% positive, that during the 2018 siege in NorCal, there were some NIFC Cmd's linked to Calfire existing fixed infrastructure at one point to expand the system coverage over an incident. It didn't last long and eventually went full NIFC I believe.
MNF August Complex has switched command today from MNF Fire to both NIFC CMD 4 and 11. I'm also seeing hits on 173.5875 and 167.8075(input to one of the boxes I think). Aircraft having trouble getting into the NIFC constellation and abandoned it back to MNF Fire.
I believe, but not 100% positive, that during the 2018 siege in NorCal, there were some NIFC Cmd's linked to Calfire existing fixed infrastructure at one point to expand the system coverage over an incident. It didn't last long and eventually went full NIFC I believe.
MNF August Complex has switched command today from MNF Fire to both NIFC CMD 4 and 11. I'm also seeing hits on 173.5875 and 167.8075(input to one of the boxes I think). Aircraft having trouble getting into the NIFC constellation and abandoned it back to MNF Fire.
Thanks for this info, I learned something I wasn't aware of. Being on the back side of the Sierra doesn't allow me to hear much radio traffic from the other side of the state, so this helps me in particular.
I might be wrong and been away from the fire business too long, but it's been my impression that Cal Fire hasn't been known for their use of portable command repeaters. That tends to show up in all these comm plans. This isn't the first time I've seen them use the NIFC system on state fires.
Somehow my reply ended up on the wrong thread? Weird. Meant for the page-turner.
Glass Fire - LNU
Command - CDF C1
Air Operations
A/G Command - CDF T13
A/G Tactical - CDF T20
A/A Rotary Wing - 132.675
Air Tactics - 167.425
Briefing - 123.825
TOLC - 123.025
Deck - 163.100
East Zone
Branch 2 Div A - CDF T1
Branch 2 Div D - CDF T26
Branch 4 Div H - CDF T30
Branch 4 Div J - CDF T31
Branch 6 Div L - VFIRE 25
Branch 6 Div N - CDF T24
Branch 10 Div U - CDF T29
Branch 10 Div W - CDF T27
Branch 10 Div X - CDF T28
West Zone
Branch 5 Div KK - VTAC 11
Branch 5 Div MM - VTAC 12
Branch 7 Div PP - CDF T25
Branch 7 Div QQ - CDF T1
Branch 9 Div SS - VTAC 13
Branch 9 Div ZZ - VTAC 14
Oakmont - CDF T4
Command - CDF C1
Air Operations
A/G Command - CDF T13
A/G Tactical - CDF T20
A/A Rotary Wing - 132.675
Air Tactics - 167.425
Briefing - 123.825
TOLC - 123.025
Deck - 163.100
East Zone
Branch 2 Div A - CDF T1
Branch 2 Div D - CDF T26
Branch 4 Div H - CDF T30
Branch 4 Div J - CDF T31
Branch 6 Div L - VFIRE 25
Branch 6 Div N - CDF T24
Branch 10 Div U - CDF T29
Branch 10 Div W - CDF T27
Branch 10 Div X - CDF T28
West Zone
Branch 5 Div KK - VTAC 11
Branch 5 Div MM - VTAC 12
Branch 7 Div PP - CDF T25
Branch 7 Div QQ - CDF T1
Branch 9 Div SS - VTAC 13
Branch 9 Div ZZ - VTAC 14
Oakmont - CDF T4
Oh look, all 4 VTAC's in use on fire lines. What an absolute waste of extremely valuable interop freqs for any other incident, or law enforcement mutual aid. Hope they don't need to suddenly need help with evacuations and there's nothing available to setup the VHF side of a VHF-UHF-700-800 stack.
What will it take CalFire to stop using those on fire lines? Why aren't VFIRE 21, 22, 23, 24, 26 and the upper CDF Tacs 32-37? Is there a confliction somewhere with any of those? Can you find 4 out of that which work? CalOES needs to step up here. Law Enforcement has nothing available for large mutual aid surge response that we can tie into an interop stack.
What will it take CalFire to stop using those on fire lines? Why aren't VFIRE 21, 22, 23, 24, 26 and the upper CDF Tacs 32-37? Is there a confliction somewhere with any of those? Can you find 4 out of that which work? CalOES needs to step up here. Law Enforcement has nothing available for large mutual aid surge response that we can tie into an interop stack.
Sonoma county has its own set of tacticals and cross band inter-ops. This, however, does no good for the foreigners here to help out.
The 2013 Rim Fire as it progressed towards Tuolumne was one of the first "evacuate an entire community and population center" incidents since the advent of the VTAC/UTAC/8TAC series. At the time, it had become the single largest Law Enforcement mutual aid event in the history of the California Law Enforcement Mutual Aid System. The fire rapidly picked up some of those VTAC's early in the game. Luckily a pair were left that we could make a VTAC36 repeater out of and provide a resemblance of coverage for law enforcement in the fire area. But it didn't address the hundreds of officers coming in from Sacramento PD, Oakland PD, Alameda SO, Tulare SO, Fresno SO, Stanislaus, etc. They were provided handheld radios on the VTAC36 repeater and told good luck, and were sent out to patrol and protect from looters, and standby for further evacs of thousands. Handheld radio coverage, in a patrol car, in the mountains. 
Their patrol radios were useless for two reasons, they weren't programmed with interop freqs (because of lack of effective comm coordination that still exists today), and many were UHF and 800Mhz. We needed a second repeater for the next round of evacuating the entire Hwy108 corridor, and there was nothing left. I was one of a few in the bullpen that suddenly became adhoc freq coordinators looking for scraps. CESRS2? CALAW2? Etc. Etc. All were used or would be serious ask-for-forgiveness-later if we threw it into a repeater pair. Ended up using a privately licensed frequency in the area that gave use permission, and tied it into a freq that Tuolumne SO had, made the pair, programmed the repeater, and we had something. And it still would have required programming every handheld radio with that pair for every officer before going into the field. Life Safety. Thankfully the fire stopped before that repeater had much air time.
2017 Napa complex. Same problem. 2018 Oroville Dam response and then later that year the Carr and Camp Fires were a little better, but limped through the whole thing. Butte County and some surrounding counties have some solid communications skillsets and sort of made things work, despite unnecessary politics still getting in the way. They also were adamant that 2018 problems never happen again. Queue up 2020 and the Bear Fire last month. Now there is an interop stack on a mountain top that happened to cover 100% of the fire, and most incoming agencies from hundreds of miles away, regardless of radio band, could plug right into their VTAC, UTAC, 7TAC or 8TAC channel on their patrol car radio, and talk to every other officer, and the Butte SO Dispatcher. Their radios, just, worked. Those that showed up STILL without interop freqs in their radios were issued a handheld and told good luck; in 2020, where most $8000 radios with 5000 channels and 100 zones are only programmed with 1 zone and PD1, PD2, PD3, and CLEMARS.
You can't count on effective communication coordination on the back end, so as a citizen, check with your local law enforcement and ask them if they have interop channels programmed in their radios and if they know how to get to them. If not, raise some noise. Letters to the Editor. City Council Mtg public statements. What if your community is next? Officers coming to help won't be able to effectively talk and be safe. They will be hindered evacuating you, and they will be hindered in protecting your home afterward from looters, and they will be hindered in protecting themselves and calling for backup while dealing with criminals in a disaster area.
All that, ALL THAT, because a state frequency coordinator issued VTACS to a fire, instead of probably reeeally stretching the available fire tactical frequencies at their disposal. We're almost there. We saw it work flawlessly in Butte in 2020, and had to fight still as fire almost grabbed one of the VTACS being used. We have proven plans in place now to rapidly deploy a solution anywhere in the state in 2 hours, (or 5 minutes with the flick of a switch by the county comm tech). All of that can be ripped away if we lose all 4 VTACS in an area to the fire line.
Their patrol radios were useless for two reasons, they weren't programmed with interop freqs (because of lack of effective comm coordination that still exists today), and many were UHF and 800Mhz. We needed a second repeater for the next round of evacuating the entire Hwy108 corridor, and there was nothing left. I was one of a few in the bullpen that suddenly became adhoc freq coordinators looking for scraps. CESRS2? CALAW2? Etc. Etc. All were used or would be serious ask-for-forgiveness-later if we threw it into a repeater pair. Ended up using a privately licensed frequency in the area that gave use permission, and tied it into a freq that Tuolumne SO had, made the pair, programmed the repeater, and we had something. And it still would have required programming every handheld radio with that pair for every officer before going into the field. Life Safety. Thankfully the fire stopped before that repeater had much air time.2017 Napa complex. Same problem. 2018 Oroville Dam response and then later that year the Carr and Camp Fires were a little better, but limped through the whole thing. Butte County and some surrounding counties have some solid communications skillsets and sort of made things work, despite unnecessary politics still getting in the way. They also were adamant that 2018 problems never happen again. Queue up 2020 and the Bear Fire last month. Now there is an interop stack on a mountain top that happened to cover 100% of the fire, and most incoming agencies from hundreds of miles away, regardless of radio band, could plug right into their VTAC, UTAC, 7TAC or 8TAC channel on their patrol car radio, and talk to every other officer, and the Butte SO Dispatcher. Their radios, just, worked. Those that showed up STILL without interop freqs in their radios were issued a handheld and told good luck; in 2020, where most $8000 radios with 5000 channels and 100 zones are only programmed with 1 zone and PD1, PD2, PD3, and CLEMARS.
You can't count on effective communication coordination on the back end, so as a citizen, check with your local law enforcement and ask them if they have interop channels programmed in their radios and if they know how to get to them. If not, raise some noise. Letters to the Editor. City Council Mtg public statements. What if your community is next? Officers coming to help won't be able to effectively talk and be safe. They will be hindered evacuating you, and they will be hindered in protecting your home afterward from looters, and they will be hindered in protecting themselves and calling for backup while dealing with criminals in a disaster area.
All that, ALL THAT, because a state frequency coordinator issued VTACS to a fire, instead of probably reeeally stretching the available fire tactical frequencies at their disposal. We're almost there. We saw it work flawlessly in Butte in 2020, and had to fight still as fire almost grabbed one of the VTACS being used. We have proven plans in place now to rapidly deploy a solution anywhere in the state in 2 hours, (or 5 minutes with the flick of a switch by the county comm tech). All of that can be ripped away if we lose all 4 VTACS in an area to the fire line.
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The VFIRE frequencies are used for initial attack in most Bay Area counties, so yes there would be a conflict here. In Marin, the VTAC frequencies are very underutilized so it wouldn't be a waste of frequencies, but I realize every county is different. Sonoma County has a crossband repeater system that uses the VTAC frequencies, but as ramal121 said it's useless to outside agencies that don't have the channels programmed. They use inputs and tones specific to Sonoma, so someone with regular VTAC/UTAC/8TAC programmed won't be able to access the repeaters.
But it didn't address the hundreds of officers coming in from Sacramento PD, Oakland PD, Alameda SO, Tulare SO, Fresno SO, Stanislaus, etc. They were provided handheld radios on the VTAC36 repeater and told good luck, and were sent out to patrol and protect from looters, and standby for further evacs of thousands. Handheld radio coverage, in a patrol car, in the mountains.
I can tell you that when we provided mutual aid for the Sonoma/Lake County fires in 2017/2018, the process was exactly the same. We were handed a portable radio and a map book, and sent out to our assigned area. Our radios have Sonoma SO channels programmed, but I guarantee that none of my fellow officers know how to get to those, or mutual aid channels like CALAW 4 or UCALL/UTAC. Police officers rarely do anything that requires them to leave the primary zone on their radios, so they simply aren't as radio-savvy as firefighters.
In Marin, the fire departments have a VHF overlay plan, so if our trunked system goes down they can fall back to several VHF repeater pairs and simplex tacticals. Law enforcement has no such backup system. We only have CALAW 4 and UCALL 40, which have very limited coverage, and a couple of car-to-car simplex tacticals. And I can tell you that my ancient Astro Spectra mobile doesn't even have CALAW/UCALL because the frequency range is 482-512 MHz (our trunked system is on T-band).
When I was working for the U.S. Forest Service the radio awareness among the average employee was pretty good. Those not in fire management full time who had fire qualifications and frequent fire assignments knew how radios worked better better than average employees. Field employees in recreation management were very good with radios, including wilderness rangers. Fire employees were outstanding. If you told them a fire was going to use NIFC Tac 3, they could find it in their radios, knowing what group to change their BK radios to. Most could program their handhelds, had a cloning cable in their apparatus, the BK push button unit and a good list of frequencies. Those without the push button know how to use a knife and get into the programming mode on their radios.
Fire personnel work mutual aid incidents far more often than law enforcement officers in municipal departments. Some sheriff's deputies in rural counties interface with other agencies far more often than those in urban areas. Law enforcement needs to provide more training, with simulated incidents where using the full potential of their radios is required. Perhaps OES needs to inspect the radio programs of LE agencies. Maybe they need to standardize programs for mutual aid. I always say, in defense of LEO's that they have much more to think about on their jobs when it comes to officer safety than fire personnel have to. Working the radio is a small part of that.
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