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SAFENET

Wildland Fire Safety & Health Reporting Network

SAFENET Event Information

Create Agency Response

SAFENET ID:

20200218-0001        [Corrective Actions]

Event Start Date:

02/18/2020 0900

Event Stop Date:

 

Incident Name:

Moab Interagency Fire Center Power Outage

Fire Number:

 

State:

Utah

Jurisdiction:

BLM

Local Unit:

UT-MOD, UT-MLF, UT-SES,

Incident Type:

Wildland

Incident Activity:

Support

Stage of Incident:

Initial Attack

Position Title:

Center Manager 

Task:

Dispatch 

Management Level:

N/A

Resources Involved:

Overhead, Engine 

Contributing Factors

Contributing Factors:

Communications, Equipment

Human Factors:

 

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.

On the morning of 2/18/20 at approximately 0900 hours, Moab Fire Center had a power outage. The phones, internet, radios and power were all down. According to Rocky Mountain Power the outage was a planned outage from 0800-1700 on 2/18/20 but this outage was not communicated to the Moab Fire Center- Center Manager until after it had happened. The Moab Fire Center does not have a working back up generator to run the Dispatch center when there are power outages. The existing generator has been broken for over a year. During the course of the 8 hour outage, one smoke report happened which the Dispatcher had to move to the Moab Operations Center and dispatch from a mobile radio. The only available repeaters during the power outage were Moab BLM, Monticello BLM and maybe Tavaputs repeater from the Moab Operations Center or from the Moab Field Office. The power outage affects radio coverage for the entire Moab Fire Zone. The radios are out for the ENTIRE fire dispatch zone and no Forest Service or National Park Service repeaters are available for the entire zone. The back up generator that has been down for over a year powers the dispatch center and the communication room next to the radio tower. The communication room houses all of the radio infrastructure for NPS, BLM and FS as it applies to Moab Fire Center radios.

Immediate Action Taken

Reporting Individual : please describe actions you took to correct or mitigate the unsafe/unhealthful event.

Immediate action taken was to report to the Fire Management Group via text and phone call. Phone calls were also made to the radio technicians for BLM and USFS. Emails were sent out advising everyone of power outage and time frames involved. No immediate solution to replacing the backup generator is available because of the infrastructure involved. Replacing a back up generator source will take more than one week. Moab Fire Center needs a reliable back up generator. National Park Service has an alternate dispatch center in Glen Canyon for communication. Moab Dispatch is the communication center for wildfires only for the NPS. The State of Utah can run dispatching through the Grand County Sheriff's office if needed.

Agency Response

20200218-0001-CA001

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