We have been advocating what we call the Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety — a system that can provide two things in real time:
- The location of a wildfire, and,
- The location of ground-based firefighting resources, including engines, water tenders, overhead personnel, dozers, and dismounted (walking) firefighters.
We are convinced that the lives of 24 firefighters could have been saved in the last eight years if a system like this had been available which can provide a “common operational picture” (COP), a standard process in the military.
Many companies offer solutions to provide the location of personnel and equipment. To illustrate how mainstream these services have become, below is a video that describes a vehicle tracking service from a cell phone company which can collect location data via cell phone networks or through satellites, so presumably it would work in very remote locations. This may or may not be feasible for tracking wildland fire vehicles, and apparently it is not for individuals, but it is an example of some of the technology that is available right now. Off the shelf. This afternoon. The U.S. Forest Service has begun a 2-year study to make a recommendation on how to proceed toward either acquiring, or doing nothing about obtaining Holy Grail capability.
The wildland fire agencies will be negligent if they do not provide this in the near future.
Other similar systems include the Blue Sky Network, the military C4ISR system now known as the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF), and many other fleet tracking solutions.
The FCC mandated cell system backup power for local towers for 8 hours if commercial power is cut or goes down.
From personal experience here when the Lower North Fork fire was nearby, the commercial cell system was overloaded and unusable during the fire.
Commercial cell services weren’t designed to handle emergency loads and long term power outages or tower damage by fire.
I think a better solution is to incorporate GPS tracking into the existing communications network radios.
As long as it is only used while actually engaged in a real fire. I don’t want the bosses to know everytime I stop for a slurpee.