National Dispatch Boundaries Interactive Map - Wildland Fire

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Paysonscanner

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Ever have trouble figuring out who is providing dispatch services in an area? I found the link below while searching for something else. I fooled with it and found it to be useful. The map base is terrible, but I think it can still help.

National Dispatch Boundaries Map

Enjoy!

EDIT, I forgot it was my 93 year old Daddy that found this.
 

ecps92

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Lots of Federal KMZ/KML DB's out there, just need the right key words to find.
Made a nice USCG Rescue 21 map from one that was hard to find.

the other source sometimes is your own state GIS Services
ie: Maps of Fire Houses etc
Tell the "old man" , nice find! :}
 

Paysonscanner

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Tell the "old man" , nice find! :}

I did. Now even the "greatest generation" can use a computer. Daddy says he wishes he had Google search back in the 1940's. He remembers hitting stumbling blocks when designing things. Then he would have to write universities and companies, hoping to get an answer back in 10-14 days.
 

Paysonscanner

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Lots of Federal KMZ/KML DB's out there, just need the right key words to find.
Made a nice USCG Rescue 21 map from one that was hard to find.

the other source sometimes is your own state GIS Services
ie: Maps of Fire Houses etc

I'm not computer literate enough to know for sure what KMZ/KML means. I think those are on Google Earth, right? I'm upset with that application, they recently "upgraded it," which fixed my biggest aggravation with it by providing a one button push escape from the oblique views. This was Daddy's biggest gripe as he used aerial photography all the time, he even picked up some graduate units in air photo interp from a university in a town we lived in for a number of years. The USFS was great about it, gave him admin leave to attend, but he had to pay for it. Our old bookmarks for Google Earth stopped working and we lost some files, which wasn't the 1st time. But!! Google Earth would be the best map base for something like this.
 

Paysonscanner

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There are some limitations with this application. It does not show the separate dispatch centers that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service have. I went through the National Unit Identifier document that is available on line. It shows 8 USFWS dispatch centers in Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. Most of these for USFWS "Refuge Complexes," which are refuges/other units administered in groups. Each of these dispatch centers order and coordinate with the centers shown on this map, but initial attack and law enforcement is handled by these centers. I could not find reference to any other sole USFWS centers in the country, they usually use interagency centers.

The National Park Service has dozens of their own dispatch centers. This, due to the type of jurisdictions they have. In many cases in the larger National Parks, their centers are PSAP's, because they have exclusive jurisdictions and state/local agencies only have jurisdiction if specifically granted by Congress, such as in the Clean Air Act and Clean Water acts. Wildland fire dispatching is often handled in these centers, examples being Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings, which are shown on this map. Not shown on the map is the center for Rocky Mtn. NP, call sign "ROMO." In the Williams Dispatch Center they show Grand Canyon in that center's area, but Williams only dispatches the wildland fire and aviation functions in the park. The park is a PSAP here. I'm not sure what goes on for Big Bend NP. The map shows it being dispatched by Alamogordo, but I think they have their own and like the USFWS centers order and coordinate wildland fire with Alamogordo. I don't know who provides 24 hour LE/EMS/Fire for Big Bend. It is an exclusive jurisdiction park.

It also doesn't reflect situations like we have in Arizona where all the Flagstaff area parks, as well as Petrified Forest NP, are dispatched by Grand Canyon. In Nevada I'm told that Great Basin NP and some others are dispatched by Lake Mead NP in Boulder City, NV. It nicely shows the separate centers the BIA/tribes have.
 

Paysonscanner

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Oh, I looked for the separate NPS centers on the Unit ID document as well. Not very many are shown. I'm nearly certain that Everglades NP does their own dispatching, but neither the Unit ID or this map reflect this. If you look it up it shows the Mendocino NF center "providing services" for the NP's in Hawaii, Guam, etc., but again this is likely to be a support/logistics coordination service only. I'm pretty sure Hawaii Volcanoes NP has their own dispatch center. Late Hubby and I took an extended honeymoon there, but our scanners were not a priority so I don't remember what I heard when we picked up the NPS on the Big Island.
 

BCFlash

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I'm not sure if the NPS Dispatch Center in Boulder City, NV dispatches Great Basin NP near Ely, NV, it's possible. They do dispatch the local BLM units, sometimes even on the same frequency with the Lake Mead NPS rangers. NPS has a couple of wildland fire engines stationed in in Boulder City as well. For the past few weeks dispatch has been understaffed with many shifts having only one person to answer phones and handle radios. I have even heard LE rangers report to dispatch to work and then heard them on the console. Don't know if this due to vacations, illness, retirements or ?
 

norcalscan

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Oh, I looked for the separate NPS centers on the Unit ID document as well. Not very many are shown. I'm nearly certain that Everglades NP does their own dispatching, but neither the Unit ID or this map reflect this. If you look it up it shows the Mendocino NF center "providing services" for the NP's in Hawaii, Guam, etc., but again this is likely to be a support/logistics coordination service only. I'm pretty sure Hawaii Volcanoes NP has their own dispatch center. Late Hubby and I took an extended honeymoon there, but our scanners were not a priority so I don't remember what I heard when we picked up the NPS on the Big Island.

I hope to go back there for my 20yr anniversary, and this time I'll bring a radio or two ;) (along with the kids :cautious:.) Mendocino locally is quick to sign off at 1800 and send Edward units to the Glenn/Colusa LG channels, and LG dispatchers cover MNF Fire after hours. If Willows was covering 3+ time zones west, you'd think they'd be able to cover the odd local call at 7-9pm...
 

es93546

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Wow, this is a great find! I've bookmarked it and waiting for winter to really delve into it.

I hope to go back there for my 20yr anniversary, and this time I'll bring a radio or two ;) (along with the kids :cautious:.) Mendocino locally is quick to sign off at 1800 and send Edward units to the Glenn/Colusa LG channels, and LG dispatchers cover MNF Fire after hours. If Willows was covering 3+ time zones west, you'd think they'd be able to cover the odd local call at 7-9pm...

The California Interagency Mobilization Guide shows Mendocino providing support to Pt Reyes and all the U.S. Pacific territories if I remember right. I don't think they actually provide dispatching to all those listed. The chart in the Mob Guide shows channels for "ordering points." North Ops doesn't want to have all the parks directly ordering from them, so the span of control is through the 3rd tier of the dispatch system. National Park dispatch centers are often considered 4th tier when it comes to emergency resources. Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings are big enough that they are 3rd tier, but Pt. Reyes and the Pacific are 4th tier. Lassen NP doesn't have a dispatch center, their net is connected to Yosemite's dispatch for everything by fire, Susanville providing for the latter.

I can't figure out Florida. There are 5 zones shown, however the state and the USFS are all dispatched by an interagency center in Tallahassee. That would be the 3rd tier and both Everglades NP and Big Cypress National Preserve have their own 4th tier centers.
 

es93546

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I'm not sure if the NPS Dispatch Center in Boulder City, NV dispatches Great Basin NP near Ely, NV, it's possible. They do dispatch the local BLM units, sometimes even on the same frequency with the Lake Mead NPS rangers. NPS has a couple of wildland fire engines stationed in in Boulder City as well. For the past few weeks dispatch has been understaffed with many shifts having only one person to answer phones and handle radios. I have even heard LE rangers report to dispatch to work and then heard them on the console. Don't know if this due to vacations, illness, retirements or ?

Great Basin NP is dispatched by Lake Mead NRA in Boulder City. I've seen it in writing somewhere. I just found it. I quote from a 2014 page on the website of a company called "Meceola Central Dispatch," which must provide their CAD or something. "Another of our newest equature" (must be the CAD system) "customers is Lake Mead Interagency Communications Center in Boulder City, Nevada." . . . "they serve five federal law enforcement and all risk agencies covering 8.2 million acres of land. The agencies include three sites of the National Park Service including Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Great Basin National Park and Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, plus the Bureau of Land Management - Las Vegas District, the Bureau of Reclamation - Hoover Dam, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Desert Refuge and the U.S. Forest Service -Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Furthermore they are the after-hours answering service for the U.S. Marshal Service and the Las Vegas Interagency Communications Center, wildland fire dispatch center."

Note that they are referring to the Spring Mountain NRA on the Humboldt-Toiyabe NF only, not the entire forest. This is for the law enforcement functions of the BLM, USFS and USFWS, the LIVCC handles fire and admin in the area of the Southern NV District of the BLM. I think each agency has their own LE repeaters. Great Basin NP's fire function is dispatched by Ely, I believe. The fire function of the BLM portion of Grand Canyon-Parashant NM is dispatched by the Color Country center in Cedar City, UT as BLM portion of this unit is part of the BLM's Arizona Strip District. The wider area, with the boundaries of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California meeting and Arizona being divided by the Grand Canyon, is hard to understand who does what and where. I think a portion of the Grand Canyon-Parashant NM is a designation of the Lake Mead NRA lands in Arizona as well as BLM lands. The juxtaposition of Grand Canyon NP, this monument and Lake Mead NRA is initially confusing. Add to that is the Great Basin GACC includes the BLM's Arizona Strip District, but does not include the north rim of Grand Canyon NP or the North Kaibab Ranger District of the Kaibab NF.

I'll bet the phone lines between Williams and Prescott, AZ, Cedar City, UT, Las Vegas, NV and the FICC in San Bernardino get a workout at times. That applies to the GACC's in Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and Riverside as well. A marine once told me that all wars are fought at the corners of four maps.

The "or ?" comment in your post was covered pretty well by someone on some thread. I remember reading about the cuts made to protection ranger numbers NPS wide. The U.S. has the best public land system in the world. The scenery in the U.S. is a draw for people all over the world. These lands are part of the nation's legacy. They generate billions in benefits for local economies that far exceed the best budgets these lands have ever received. Now the situation is very bad for the people dedicated to managing them. I had a tough time doing so from 1974 to 1999 and now the budgets are far worse, the agencies are almost not functioning.
 

norcalscan

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Lassen NP doesn't have a dispatch center, their net is connected to Yosemite's dispatch for everything by fire, Susanville providing for the latter.

Is there a typo in there? Susanville does fire, Yosemite does everything else... I also wonder how Yosemite audio gets up here, if it's wireline to HQ near Mineral and then TX'd from there, or through SIFC. I didn't even think of that when SIFC went off the grid for a week when their fiber got burnt in the Hog fire last month. And Mineral phones through Frontier I believe are fed from the valley via microwave.
 

es93546

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Is there a typo in there? Susanville does fire, Yosemite does everything else... I also wonder how Yosemite audio gets up here, if it's wireline to HQ near Mineral and then TX'd from there, or through SIFC. I didn't even think of that when SIFC went off the grid for a week when their fiber got burnt in the Hog fire last month. And Mineral phones through Frontier I believe are fed from the valley via microwave.

Yes, a typo. I meant to say "everything but fire." I think someone at the Susanville Center told me LNP uses a VoIP connection to Yosemite. This could have changed since then. Susanville was handling the park's law enforcement services, but the rangers were dissatisfied with it. I was there back in about 2000-2001 and the center manager gave my wife and I a very nice tour. Since I was a retired USFS employee we were welcomed in. It was late September or early October and it was quiet at the time. Yosemite has an excellent dispatch center. I think LE services for Pinnacles NP are provided by the Sequoia-Kings, Ash Mountain dispatch center. I think the NPS contracts fire protection to Cal Fire at Pinnacles.

EDIT. My USFS retiree card gets me into a few places. Otherwise, I can get a $1 coffee for $2.50 almost anywhere!
 

SBSteve

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Because the national wildland fire ordering system refers to an ordering point as a dispatch center you might be confusing the two? For example: the Los Padres National Forest (LPF) dispatch center (LPCC) is the ordering point for the; Fish and Wildlife - Hopper Mountain and Bitter Creek Refuges, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians, National Park Service - Channel Islands National Park, Bureau of Reclamation - Lake Casitas and Lake Cachuma, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Fort Hunter Ligget Army Base. But the LPF/LPCC typically only dispatches (by radio or other means) LPF resources. CNP, AFV etc. have their own radio communication centers. Any (most, outside of mutual aid) wildland fire orders are placed to and filled by LPCC for these entities. And as far as I know, at least as far as PSAP registration goes, AFV (maybe Hunter Ligget?) is the only one of these entities that is an actual PSAP (911 answering point).

Another example is Santa Barbara County Fire Department (SBC/SBDC) (XSB/XSBC). By virtue of the fact that SBC is a contract county to CALFIRE they assume the role of a CALFIRE Unit in Santa Barbara County and therefore are the ordering point/dispatch center (ECC) for the SRA within the county. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department is also the ordering point/dispatch center for the CAL OES Santa Barbara County Operational Area (XSBC) and although OES orders extend beyond the wildland environment, any orders placed to or filled for OES by STB, SMR, LMP, MTO, SBC, GUA and CRP are done by XSBC. SBC is also (or soon will be again) a secondary PSAP. STB, LMP, SMR/GUA, fall under their respective police department primary PSAP’s and MTO/CRP is a secondary PSAP. Each have their own fire radio dispatch systems (STB, LMP, SMR/GUA and MTO/CRP.

California is somewhat unique in certain respects, but this is how it generally works nationwide. Did this help?
 

Paysonscanner

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Yes, I understand
Because the national wildland fire ordering system refers to an ordering point as a dispatch center you might be confusing the two? For example: the Los Padres National Forest (LPF) dispatch center (LPCC) is the ordering point for the; Fish and Wildlife - Hopper Mountain and Bitter Creek Refuges, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians, National Park Service - Channel Islands National Park, Bureau of Reclamation - Lake Casitas and Lake Cachuma, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Fort Hunter Ligget Army Base. But the LPF/LPCC typically only dispatches (by radio or other means) LPF resources. CNP, AFV etc. have their own radio communication centers. Any (most, outside of mutual aid) wildland fire orders are placed to and filled by LPCC for these entities. And as far as I know, at least as far as PSAP registration goes, AFV (maybe Hunter Ligget?) is the only one of these entities that is an actual PSAP (911 answering point).

Another example is Santa Barbara County Fire Department (SBC/SBDC) (XSB/XSBC). By virtue of the fact that SBC is a contract county to CALFIRE they assume the role of a CALFIRE Unit in Santa Barbara County and therefore are the ordering point/dispatch center (ECC) for the SRA within the county. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department is also the ordering point/dispatch center for the CAL OES Santa Barbara County Operational Area (XSBC) and although OES orders extend beyond the wildland environment, any orders placed to or filled for OES by STB, SMR, LMP, MTO, SBC, GUA and CRP are done by XSBC. SBC is also (or soon will be again) a secondary PSAP. STB, LMP, SMR/GUA, fall under their respective police department primary PSAP’s and MTO/CRP is a secondary PSAP. Each have their own fire radio dispatch systems (STB, LMP, SMR/GUA and MTO/CRP.

California is somewhat unique in certain respects, but this is how it generally works nationwide. Did this help?

I understood that prior to posting this thread, maybe I wasn't clear about that. It can be easy to confuse centers that provide dispatching and an ordering point for agencies with those that provide an ordering point only. Individual dispatch center websites always list the agencies they dispatch for and GACC mobilization guides show the ordering channels. Sometimes GACC mob guides will show all the agencies dispatched by each comm center, but not in every GACC. I think the Mendocino Dispatch Center also is an ordering point for Golden Gate NRA, but we know they don't dispatch there. This NRA is on a shared 400 meg system with the two national labs in the Bay Area, Lawrence-Livermore and Lawrence-Berkeley. I don't remember is Sandia Lab is on that system as well. I think the NPS does their own dispatching for the NRA.
 

Paysonscanner

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Because the national wildland fire ordering system refers to an ordering point as a dispatch center you might be confusing the two? For example: the Los Padres National Forest (LPF) dispatch center (LPCC) is the ordering point for the; Fish and Wildlife - Hopper Mountain and Bitter Creek Refuges, Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians, National Park Service - Channel Islands National Park, Bureau of Reclamation - Lake Casitas and Lake Cachuma, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Fort Hunter Ligget Army Base. But the LPF/LPCC typically only dispatches (by radio or other means) LPF resources. CNP, AFV etc. have their own radio communication centers. Any (most, outside of mutual aid) wildland fire orders are placed to and filled by LPCC for these entities. And as far as I know, at least as far as PSAP registration goes, AFV (maybe Hunter Ligget?) is the only one of these entities that is an actual PSAP (911 answering point).

Another example is Santa Barbara County Fire Department (SBC/SBDC) (XSB/XSBC). By virtue of the fact that SBC is a contract county to CALFIRE they assume the role of a CALFIRE Unit in Santa Barbara County and therefore are the ordering point/dispatch center (ECC) for the SRA within the county. The Santa Barbara County Fire Department is also the ordering point/dispatch center for the CAL OES Santa Barbara County Operational Area (XSBC) and although OES orders extend beyond the wildland environment, any orders placed to or filled for OES by STB, SMR, LMP, MTO, SBC, GUA and CRP are done by XSBC. SBC is also (or soon will be again) a secondary PSAP. STB, LMP, SMR/GUA, fall under their respective police department primary PSAP’s and MTO/CRP is a secondary PSAP. Each have their own fire radio dispatch systems (STB, LMP, SMR/GUA and MTO/CRP.

California is somewhat unique in certain respects, but this is how it generally works nationwide. Did this help?

I think someone explained dispatch centers and ordering points in another thread in the CA forums somewhere. The number of dispatch centers and jurisdictions in southern California make ordering points important to establish when fires burn across 3-4 jurisdictions in ashort time. I lived in California 40 years in "CDF Country" on the west side of the Sierra Nevada. My late Hubby was a volunteer fire department member for about 35 years. He figured out most of the procedures used for fire logistics and dispatching. We lived in a county where CDF provided battalion chiefs for groups of volunteer departments in the county. He loved to talk with those batt chiefs! I moved out in late 2018 to take care of my aging parents, my Daddy a retired USFS civil engineer (1951-1987) in Region 3.
 

Paysonscanner

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Maybe this will help.

We're on that one all the time. Daddy found it years ago, maybe 15-20? 93 now and he still has fire and engineering in his blood! He wants to pass along that the lawnmower business must be good where you live! He might be in his 90's, but is really good with Google Earth!
 
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Hi PS,
I heard recently that the BLM Districts in Colorado were being re-aligned to match with the dispatch areas. That will certainly make things smoother. I don't know if that was just Colorado or if that is coming to other states as well.
 
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