SAFENET


SAFENET

Wildland Fire Safety & Health Reporting Network

SAFENET Event Information
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SAFENET ID:
20180603-0001        [Corrective Actions]
Event Start Date:
05/31/2018 1430
Event Stop Date:
05/31/2018 1930 
Incident Name:
SJN-Support-2018
Fire Number:
 
State:
Colorado
Jurisdiction:
USFS
Local Unit:
San Juan NF / CO-DRC
Incident Type:
Wildland
Incident Activity:
Support
Stage of Incident:
Non-incident
Position Title:
Electronics Technician 
Task:
Cloning Radios 
Management Level:
N/A
Resources Involved:
Engines, Work Trucks, Handheld Radios, Mobile Radios 
Contributing Factors
Contributing Factors:
Communications, Equipment
Human Factors:
Situational Awareness  
Other Factors:
Proper training on radios 
Narrative
Describe in detail what happened including the concern or potential issue, the environment (weather, terrain, fire behavior, etc), and the resulting health issue.
The San Juan NF and CO-DRC zone are in exceptional drought conditions and are in extreme fire danger conditions. The zone has been in Stage 1 fire restrictions since May 1st and just went into Stage 2 June 1st. An Eastern Oregon Task Force ordered for severity arrived at the Columbine RD office on the morning of 5/31/2018 for their in briefing and to receive Columbine RD Fire group/zone radio clone. Because of the amount of WUI and the strong Mutual Aid agreements that are in place with local cooperators, the San Juan NF Fire groups/zones utilize User Code Guard (UCG)/ User TX Tone Picklist functionality in order to have all necessary federal and local channels accessible within a single group/zone. The Eastern Oregon Task Force mainly consists of BLM and have KNG-P150s handheld radios and KNG-M150 mobile radios. Upon receiving the clones and the channel plan for Columbine RD Fire, many personnel did not know what user select tones were, nor were their radios setup for to support this functionality. Columbine’s FMO tried to program picklist tones and/or activate UCG within their radio’s Keypad Programming Menu, but the option to do so had been removed from their radios or were not available due to very old firmware versions the radios were operating on. All of this is happening during Red Flag conditions, and finally the FMO called the San Juan NF Electronics Technician (ET) for assistance around 1230. We are in a unique radio model transitional period – currently we are seeing more KNG model radios being used in the fire organizations and after talking to some Task Force members, they mentioned that many of them just received these new types of radios (mainly the KNG-M150) in their engines/trucks and were not formally trained on how to use them. Most did not know how to clone to them (enter destination clone mode), or how or why the radios were setup the way they were. There has been and will continue to be instances similar to this, highlighting the NEED for a national standard for configuring KNG model handheld (KNG-P150s, KNG-P150, KNG2-P150) and mobile (KNG-M150, KNG-M150R) radios and picklist tones. It is just a matter of time before someone is hurt or killed because of this.
Immediate Action Taken
Reporting Individual : please describe actions you took to correct or mitigate the unsafe/unhealthful event.
The San Juan NF ET arrived at the Columbine RD office at 1530 to assist. After arriving and taking stock of what was at issue, it was determined that each handheld and mobile radio had to be reprogrammed through Radio Editor Software (RES) in order to enable and build out user picklist tones. Upon going through this process, the ET realized that just about every single radio was running firmware versions that were 3 + years old and nearly all radios were configured differently. The ET did not have legacy RES software and was forced to update all radio firmware versions on KNG handhelds and mobile radios in order to reprogram the Task Force’s radios. This process took several hours as the ET also trained Task Force members how to clone their KNG-M150R (remote head cloning has to be done on the main chassis, not on the remote head – many hard to access) and teach them how to use the picklist to select TX tones. At 1700, the Task Force left the Columbine RD office to report to their duty location – with an overall 7 hour gap in service during red flag conditions.


Agency Response

20180603-0001-CA001

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