Three incidents come to mind. The first was on a drive from the eastern Sierra to the LAX area. As is usual we stop in Pearsonville to load the California Desert file into the GRE PSR-600 mounted in our car. We then stop in Mojave where we load the L.A. County file. We were not far out of Mojave when we started to hear some CHP traffic about an accident on CA14 near the Aqua Dulce exit. We then heard just a little L.A. Co FD traffic about a truck on fire in the same location. Then Caltrans chimed in with traffic about changeable message signs, extended time road closures and getting some engineering folks rolling as pavement and bridge damage assessments were likely. We then heard that a large fuel tank truck was flipped over and the truck and trailer were on fire. Fuel was running down the road on fire and the heat was so intense that whatever part of the truck not physically blocking the lanes had all four lanes closed. We were able to hear a blow by blow description of where the traffic was backed up to. We first thought of taking the old highway, past Boiling Point, etc. Then we heard it was backed up as that was the official detour. I told my wife we would have take the Pearblossom Highway exit and get onto Angeles Forest highway. We were climbing the hill when someone from Caltrans announced that CA 14 was within a few car lengths of being backed up to that exit and that the changeable message signs should be moved to that exit so people would exit there and then get back to the old highway in Acton. We exited before that and only had one car doing the same. We took Angeles Forest highway and arrived about 45 minutes later than normal for this trip. That night on the news we heard that some vehicles were stuck on 14 for 9 hours. The fact that Dept. of Transportation employees tend to be the chattiest people on the radio helped us in this case.
The second incident was on the drive to the Scottsdale, Arizona area for Christmas. At that time we were driving down to I-10 in San Bernardino to take across to Phoenix. When were 30-40 miles west of the Phoenix metro area when we heard about a major incident in the I-10 tunnels near downtown Phoenix. I had figured out the ADOT trunked system on previous trips to the area. We had the benefit of listening to it and the AZ DPS, which both use repeaters so all the mobile traffic could be heard from that distance. I heard that the backup included AZ 101, I-17 and I-10. At some point, someone with ADOT on the west side needed to go around to enter the tunnels from the east side using I-10. Someone replied with what lane to stay in until a certain exit, to then get into a particular lane, then at another point get into another lane. Then, somewhere near the I-17 get off at an exit, take such and such streets, get on I-17, take it to the northbound I-10 and get into the tunnel from the east. They said the backup started somewhere west of the 90 degree turn I-10 take near downtown. Yessiree Bob, we moved faster through the backup west of I-17 than any other lane and when we got near the backup on the east side of the incident we turned east on AZ 202. It was like having a helicopter telling us where to go. Later that night, once again, the 11 pm news covered the incident, along with saying some cars were trapped in the backup for 3 hours and that all surface streets were backed up, requiring Phoenix PD officers to direct traffic at intersections.
The third time was during a fire on the Angeles National Forest on northbound I-5. I was in my USFS green truck along with my fire crew in a bus behind me. We'd been on this fire for a couple of days at that point. The plan for the day was to do a burnout starting on the east shoulder of the freeway a few miles north of the Templin Highway exit. Caltrans was going to close off 2 or 3 lanes of northbound I-5 to give us room to operate. I love burning operations any time I can get near one so I was excited. We drove up the freeway to our assigned location. I had turned on my trusty BC-780 mounted under the Midland on the dash. and I had my scanner going with both the CHP and Caltrans in my "highway" bank. I carried freq. info in my truck at all times. This was back in 1996 so a current copy of "Police Call" California volume was on board. I had programmed the 780 in camp the 1st chance I had. There was an entire division of resources parked on the shoulder of the road including dozers, engine strike teams, water tenders and several crews. Some Caltrans people started talking about how the lane closures could not be done and why. I called my division sup to relay what I heard. He told me to get on command and call the incident comms. This news caused a bit of a stir with command staff and comms told us to standby, they were working on it. Then, another part of the fire near Magic Mountain blew up and we lost all the dozers, most of the engines and water tenders and a couple of crews. Command got back to us and told us to cancel and join the structure protection folks at the Paradise "Ranch." Passing on this information was quite helpful and very timely for command. The fire made a good downhill run at the mobile home park at Paradise, but the years that place is not threatened by a fire are infrequent. The events that afternoon were pretty wild when the fire made a major run at us, but that is another story.
There are several others, but these two are the most dramatic. I always listen to the DOT's in any state I'm driving through. I don't understand why people aren't interested in getting good freq. info for DOT's. To me these are important agencies to listen to, especially living in heavy snow country as I do.
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