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SAFENET

Wildland Fire Safety & Health Reporting Network

SAFENET Event Information

Create Agency Response

SAFENET ID:

20240303-0001

Event Start Date:

03/02/2024 1000

Event Stop Date:

 

Incident Name:

Daniel Boone NF Fire Support

Fire Number:

P8EK6Q 

State:

Kentucky

Jurisdiction:

USFS

Local Unit:

Redbird Ranger District

Incident Type:

Wildland, Prescribed/Fuels Treatment

Incident Activity:

Line, Support, Transport to/from, Readiness/Preparedness

Stage of Incident:

Initial Attack, Extended Attack, Other

Position Title:

Duty Officer 

Task:

Iniital attack/ Prescibed fire operations 

Management Level:

N/A

Resources Involved:

4 Engines, 5 overhead, 1 suppression module and others 

Contributing Factors

Contributing Factors:

Communications

Human Factors:

Decision Making  

Other Factors:

Age of radio communications infrastructure. Budget prioritization  

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 3/2/24 the main repeater for Redbird district of the Daniel Boone NF went offline. With the Peabody site being the main link repeater back to Winchester dispatch it takes down the other two repeaters also. With no communications with dispatch the safety of all responding resources to initial attack is severely impacted. This will lead ICs to not engage a fire if there is no other form of communications (i.e. Cell phones). The radio system on the Daniel Boone is in poor condition in general so the failure of this repeater is not a surprise. The lack of prioritizing an upgraded system that has been asked for over the last two years, has led to this failure and probably more in the future.

Immediate Action Taken

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

We called the forest radio technician, who was on a fire assignment in Texas, and we tried to troubleshoot the repeater. The repeaters receiving module was determined to be malfunctioning. The forest did not have a replacement. Other forest radio techs were called to source a receiver module that could be mailed to Redbird. A ticket to CIO has been submitted also.

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