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SAFENET

Wildland Fire Safety & Health Reporting Network

SAFENET Event Information
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SAFENET ID:
20180615-0001        [Corrective Actions]
Event Start Date:
06/15/2018 0730
Event Stop Date:
 
Incident Name:
Boise Dispatch Radio Moducom System Failure
Fire Number:
 
State:
Idaho
Jurisdiction:
USFS
Local Unit:
ID-BDC, Boise National Forest, Boise District BLM, Idaho Department of Lands
Incident Type:
Wildland
Incident Activity:
Support
Stage of Incident:
Initial Attack, Extended Attack, Other
Position Title:
Center Manager 
Task:
DISPATCHING 
Management Level:
N/A
Resources Involved:
 
Contributing Factors
Contributing Factors:
Communications, Equipment
Human Factors:
Performance  
Other Factors:
 
Narrative
Describe in detail what happened including the concern or potential issue, the environment (weather, terrain, fire behavior, etc), and the resulting health issue.
Boise Interagency Dispatch Center received an updated Moducom radio system during the winter of 2017-18.

While troubleshooting an issue with the radio's simul-select function, a separate frequency bleed-over issue was identified.

Bleed-Over: When one dispatcher was transmitting on a BLM frequency and another transmitted on a USFS frequency, the bleed-over occurred. The mountain tops where the involved repeaters are located are hundreds of miles apart, so bleed over should be impossible. The radio tech contacted Moducum and determined that a system software issue is causing bleed-over when more than one dispatch pod transmits at a time. Moducom indicated that a software fix for the problem would take up to a week to write.

Simul-select: Dispatchers are not able to select multiple frequencies to tone out fires, read the weather, tone out alerts, or extend staffing.

As a result, dispatchers are only able to transmit on one frequency at a time. The dispatch center monitors 10 frequencies for emergency traffic, with a dispatcher at each of 6 pods. Currently only one dispatcher can transmit at a time. This is a huge potential safety issue if more than one incident is occurring.
Immediate Action Taken
Reporting Individual : please describe actions you took to correct or mitigate the unsafe/unhealthful event.
The Forest Service Radio Tech was in contact with Moducom, who requested a system reboot. This exercise did not work. It was then deemed that Moducom would need to rewrite the software to configure so multiple users could transmit at once.

Dispatch Center set up operations in Expanded Dispatch to facilitate move of dispatchers to separate temporary radio systems. A message was put out to all employees of the three agencies that make up BDC to make them aware of the issue and the priority of radio traffic transmissions.


Agency Response

20180615-0001-CA001

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