Florida Forest Service tracks the location of firefighters

A Firefighter on the White Draw Fire in South Dakota, June 29, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert
A Firefighter on the White Draw Fire in South Dakota, June 29, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert

We have written several times about how the inability of fire supervisors to always be situationally aware of the location of firefighters has contributed to at least 24 deaths in recent years — 19 on the Yarnell Hill Fire and 5 on the Esperanza fire. Last month we told you about a system the Florida Forest Service is installing in their radio systems that tracks the location of firefighters. The Orlando Sentinel has an article about this system which provides a few more details. Below is an excerpt:

…To cut through the fog and friction, the Florida Forest Service has been rolling out its Asset Tracker System, equipping all of the nearly 400 bulldozers and fire engines statewide with GPS receivers and radio transmitters. System software will be installed in the laptops of nearly 60 supervisors.

Ralph Crawford, assistant chief of forest protection, said the largely home-built system will cost nearly $2 million but won’t have major, ongoing costs because it doesn’t rely on cellphone or Internet service.

Among the first crews equipped with tracking units were those responding to the Blue Ribbon Fire. But the system was still new, and only one of the ill-fated bulldozers had a location transmitter.

Since then, the system has been refined, and its capabilities are becoming more apparent, said John Kern, a deputy chief of field operations.

Every 30 seconds, the units blurt out an electronic warble, confirming that a packet of data containing unit identification, location, speed and direction had been transmitted by a 40-watt radio able to reach supervisor laptops within 2 miles.

The system doesn’t provide a complete picture of a wildfire; the blaze, for example, isn’t outlined on maps depicted on laptop screens.

But Kern said supervisors are learning to correlate the GPS tracking data with their knowledge of tactics used when fighting fires with bulldozers. Supervisors also will know where to direct a helicopter to drop water should trouble occur.

“If one of our guys calls in, ‘I’m stuck and about to be burned over,’ we’ll know where to go,” Kerns said.

 

Thanks and a hat tip go out to Kraig

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

13 thoughts on “Florida Forest Service tracks the location of firefighters”

  1. These are the same people complaining about the waste of money, who have yet to see the system work on a fire. Because, thats right, Florida hasnt had a major fire season since the system was in its expermential stages in 2011. We have not seen this system at its full potential, whether it works or not, and it is better than what we have had in the past, which was nothing. So please take a deep breath and give it a chance.

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  2. BTW, as far as dense smoke and clouds, tech-savvy people, which I am not, can probably explain what is happening, as apparently it’s not the clouds themselves blocking the signal in that case. But, play with tracking in those conditions and it does seem impaired.

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  3. Anyone know if this “system” has been field tested in dense smoke situations? GPS signals can be notoriously weak and desperate situations like those experienced by GM at Yarnell Hill might interfere with signal strength/accuracy. Would GPS be workable in such situations…..not that it’s have made any difference for GM even if they were more accurately locatable?

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    1. Dense smoke, clouds, hills, rocky terrain, all interfere with GPS. Just put GPS tracker or a similar utility on a few smartphones and play around with it. WFFs will in general have access to smartphones and can bootstrap their own GPS tracking now, and some have. But, particularly in the western US, in many cases GPS won’t work. There are workarounds but so far as I know all would be hundreds of $$ per person. Of course, hundreds of $$ would be cheap relative to what FL just spent, which is mind-blowing.

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      1. This system uses NOTHING GPS related!!!! It is done via radio signals ONLY…. and we all know how radios work on wildfires..

        All of these articles are misleading and FALSE. There is no GPS, no internet, only VHF radio waves requiring repeaters.

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        1. Very interesting. Sounds even more odd, then.

          On the homebrew front, I’d mentioned GPS tracker. I should also have mentioned Nike+, ViewRanger and similar outdoorsy sports-related apps that you can then share with designated “friends” to, with sufficiently frequent updates, actually get route info that imo is easier to see than that with GPS tracker. Again I am not a good tech guy and there are probably better alternatives right now that I don’t know about.

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        2. It is a step in the right direction, maybe a tiny baby step, but still something. I only hope people do not get the impression realtime tracking of people and equipment is a bad idea based on Florida’s attempt that didn’t go so well. Maybe someone in USFS communication team will hear about this and push a better effort. I wish I knew who to contact to help out.

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  4. Jim, the equipment is only based inside vehicles. it takes a receiver box and a designated mobile vehicle mounted radio to work. The system is not designed to track firefighters but just their equipment. Ideally one day the system will allow tracking of individual firefighters but at this time if a firefighter has to abandon their equipment, they are on their own. the equivalent to this equipment for a hotshot crew is having the system in their transport vehicles. It wouldn’t help the guys at all once they got on the line. It is a system with a ton of potential, but still needs a huge amount of work.

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  5. the down side to this whole system being, it is only of value IF a supervisor is onscene with his laptop and system enabled, the units in the tractor/plows and type 6 engines can only send out data, they cannot receive or display position information or the satellite map. In addition the supervisors display can only show the location of the units moving on the map, it may be possible to extrapolate a fire perimeter from that. And if a unit becomes stuck, broke down, etc. the supervisor has to instruct the other units on scene how to get to the unit (and Ranger) in trouble, as they cannot see the problem. And we still have to notify the IC or dispatch over the radio if we are in trouble. as well as limited range (2 miles?)

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  6. Our local ham club is active in using APRS (aprs.org for a lot more detail) for location reporting during bike and foot races. Positions of stations (mobile, personal, fixed) are easily mapped, either on internet based maps or stand alone software. Dollar costs range from a few tens if you have an existing radio to a few hundred if you are starting from scratch for each station. It is simple to use but does require some training. Range of the system is what you expect from VHF radios and digipeaters are readily made to extend the range to world-wide through internet linking. The club has made a few digipeaters that can simply be dropped off, preferably near a tree to hang the antenna from.

    Two million dollars as mentioned in the Florida Forest Service article would supply a lot of hotshot crews and ICS teams with the necessary equipment. In the ideal world, they would spend this winter getting up to speed.

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    1. Jim, it would also be great to read in QST or on the ARRL website how this all works out, “in the field”, to inspire others. So happy to see this cooperation between amateur radio and the fire service.

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    1. Its not new they have had it since 2010 or 2011. They actually installed it on all the units and canned it a few months later. Now they sink more money into it “hoping”it works as planned.

      The same funds could have been spent on a better product instead of trying to improve this one.

      Basically they bought a rotary dial house phone for the same price they shoulda spent on Iphone 5’s. They both make calls right?

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