| The US Forest Service CIO issues handheld radios that are not compatible with the radio system used by all other State and local cooperators in the entire state. There are currently over 120 local, state and federal agencies that are members of ALMR and the USFS, with the exception of law enforcement, is not a member. This is not a new issue as we have previously requested support for adequate technology upgrades to safely communicate with state and local cooperators that use the Alaska Land Mobile Radio system(ALMR) for emergency response and support. Many other federal agencies (AFS, NPS) in the state of Alaska are issued the appropriate radios. We are given one ALMR capable radio for the entire engine; however, due to lack of support at the agency level, the radio is not programmed or maintained by our radio shop, due to lack of support on the Forest Service level, to actually be functional on the ALMR system. We were unaware our one radio was taken off the system entirely, so we found out we would be entirely unable to communicate to fulfill our assigned task of providing initial attack support for the host agency. This was also a major issue while this fire was under the Type 3 team, as they were also utilizing ALMR radio system for the incident. Once the type 2 team took over, they did remove the ALMR channels. There were multiple IAs today, so the chance of being requested was very high and could have greatly impacted communications with our expected response. Luckily the other resources were able to catch them without our assistance, but the weather is entering a warming and drying trend and prompt reliable communications with supervisors and adjoining forces is a key tenant in safe firefighting. The incident has supported us fully in providing replacement radios that have the technology to work on assigned frequencies. |
