Before coming to Eastern Nevada for severity assignment I had put in a radio repair request for the Midland Mobile in my command vehicle. The casing around the wires had broken and the wires have begun to pull out of the smart mic rendering it inoperable. The Radio techs that were assigned the ticket told me they would fix it, but that there are no more Midland Mobile radio parts to be had for repairs anymore. They assured me they could fix it though.
Their fix to the problem was to electrical tape around the broken wire casing to the smart mic. Flash forward to the Big Summit fire as the OPS3 the wires start pulling out more and causing me to not be able to transmit information to the divisions, and my handheld was not powerful enough to hit the furthest divisions. I ended up having to push the wires up into the Smart mic to be able to transmit out. I can not request a new radio because of new USDA Radio Policy for USFS, even though the Midland is obsolete, and can not buy new parts for them. I was told if the radio fully broke, then my command vehicle would not have a mobile radio in it, because there are no more to replace it with on our forest.
Because of this issue there could have been a critical failure of communication between operations and divisions, and because of new policy changes we can not buy new radios with project funds to remedy the situation of aging radio stock. |
