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SAFENET

Wildland Fire Safety & Health Reporting Network

SAFENET Event Information

Create Agency Response

SAFENET ID:

20231029-0001        [Corrective Actions]

Event Start Date:

10/27/2023 1200

Event Stop Date:

 

Incident Name:

North River Ranger District Repeater Outage

Fire Number:

 

State:

Virginia

Jurisdiction:

USFS

Local Unit:

North River Ranger District

Incident Type:

Wildland, Prescribed/Fuels Treatment

Incident Activity:

Support, Readiness/Preparedness

Stage of Incident:

Non-incident

Position Title:

Center Manager 

Task:

Radio Communications 

Management Level:

N/A

Resources Involved:

2 egines, fire and district personnel 

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 10/27/2023 at approximately 1200 hrs, we (in the dispatch office) realized we could not transmit on either North River Ranger District repeater when an engine had called in on the Elliott Knob repeater that was enroute to check a recent fire. We can hear transmissions from the field but we cannot transmit. I contacted our radio tech to see if he could take a look at it. He discovered that the entire district was down including 3 pieces of equipment attached to the network. He submitted a ticket (INC000007479549). As of 10/29/2023 the repeaters are still down. Potential issues: We are in our fall fire season and have resources supporting a cooperator incident that includes a T2IA crew and 2 aircraft...we could easily end up with an incident on the North River Ranger District and not be able to communicate with resources due to both repeaters being down.

Immediate Action Taken

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

Currently, mitigation includes using alternate repeaters if possible depending on location and cell phones

Agency Response

20231029-0001-CA001

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