The Florida Wildfires

Oak Head Fire Assignment

An Insider's View of Coordinating
Wildfire Communications

by Kevin Harper

Sidebar: Incident Management Teams

Related Articles: Florida In Flames

Photographs: (select thumbnail to view detail image)

A pair of firefighters hurry to don their safety gear as flames break through a tree line along US92 near Daytona Beach. Brian Cleary

California Interagency Management Team 3 on deployment at the Oak Head Fire during June, 1998. Kevin Harper

This article can be found on page 128 of the Nov/Dec 1998 issue of  9-1-1 Magazine.

The fire quickly grew beyond the forest's capability and the US Forest Service's Region Eight's Blue Team was brought in to assume responsibility. By June 8th, 1998, at 1900 hours the Blue Team had the fire under control and relinquished their authority back to the Osceola National Forest.

But on June 19, a large thunder and lightning storm came through the area and blew what was left of the fire across containment lines and into the Big Gum Swamp Wilderness. It was at this point that a Type I Incident Management Team was ordered.

On Friday, June 19th, 1998, I was alerted to California Interagency Incident Management Team Three's deployment to the Holiday Fire outside of Tallahassee, Florida. Arrangements were made and I met up with team members along the way. We arrived in Tallahassee on the 20th at 2400 hours pacific time. We made contact with the expanded dispatch facility at the airport and headed to our hotel for the night.

On Sunday at 0615 the team assembled in the lobby of the hotel. Greg Greenhoe, Incident Commander, informed us that we had been re-assigned to the Oak Head Complex Fire approximately 100 miles east of Tallahassee.

A formal line officers' briefing was held at the Osceola District Office at 1300 hours. During the briefing I was informed that they were currently using the Forest's repeater for all incident communications. This was creating congestion between the fire traffic and day to day radio traffic. Osceola National Forest wanted the incident off of Forest Net as soon as possible.

Normally, following a line officers' briefing, the functional units will shadow their counterparts on the existing team for several hours prior to taking control of the incident; however, there was no Communications Unit Leader assigned to the incident when I arrived. When I asked about where I could find the Forest's communications shop, I was informed that they did not have a communications shop, they contract all radio work out.

I immediately ordered a Communications Starter System along with the necessary Personnel (Incident Communications Center Manager, a Communication Technician, and two Radio Operators [Incident Dispatchers]).

The Incident Command Post was set up at a local school just north of Lake City. I determined that 25 phone lines would be necessary to support communications in and out of the Command Post. I was unable to make contact with the phone company until Monday, June 22nd. An engineer was able to provide us with six working lines by the end of the day. By Tuesday afternoon twenty-two lines were set up, but that was all they could provide. During the next several days, we experienced various difficulties with the phone lines affecting both outgoing and incoming calls.

I consulted with the local cellular companies on the availability of rental cell phones. I was told that due to the large number of fires in the state, phone supplies were limited. I was only able to get 10 cellular phones.

Following Wednesday morning's briefing, I was introduced to three of my staff members, the Communications Center Manager, the Radio Technician, and a Radio Operator. I had received the Communications Starter System the night before and we were to set up the repeater that day.

Several factors contributed to communication difficulties. The area surrounding the Osceola National Forest is very flat (elevation ranges from 125' to 145'). In some areas the foliage was so dense that tactical channels would not work very well. There were even times when human repeaters were used to relay communications to the crews on the fire line.

There were three lookout towers on the forest, each approximately 150' tall: the West Tower; the East Tower; and the Olustee Tower (the only staffed tower), located to the south.

The fire was headed west and was endangering homes, so I decided to locate the portable repeater on the West Tower. After waiting out a thunderstorm, the radio tech and I carried the equipment to the top of the tower. Despite a large nest of wasps, we were able to get the repeater installed and operational without getting stung.

I contacted the Day Division Supervisors to test the repeater prior to adding it to the Radio Plan. The new site worked well on the South and West sides of the incident.

At the morning briefing on Thursday, June 25th, 1998, it was announced that the new repeater was operational and would be called "Command." The Osceola's repeater would only be used as a back up. The portable radios needed to be cloned to the new channel line-up, so everybody had the correct frequencies in their radios.

It was soon discovered that coverage by the "command" repeater was not sufficient to support the North and East sides of the fire effectively. An additional repeater and radio links were ordered. Communications on the North and East sides of the fire were forced to operate on the Forest repeater.

We began to consider other options. We considered putting a repeater in an airplane and having it circle the incident. However, due to the amount of thunderstorms and long flight hours this plan was dropped. We also looked into using an existing 400-foot commercial radio tower. Cellular One informed me that they also had a 400-foot tower nearby that we could use for free.

On Friday, June 26th, 1998 we installed the new repeater in the East Tower. The link worked, but still did not cover the area needed. We decided to relocate the repeater from the East Tower to the Olustee Tower. A problem arose when the Radio Technician attempted to remove the equipment from the East Tower. He was stung numerous times by wasps. We had to wait for a can of insecticide before proceeding. In the mean time we began searching for a site to move the new repeater to. We located an antenna not being used on an existing Forest Service Tower that was facing north, toward to fire. Once again, the link worked well, but coverage was still lacking.

There was an Air Tanker Base and Helibase located at the Lake City Airport, which was being supported by the Florida Interagency Coordination Center (FICC). They had a radio technician assigned to support their operation. On Sunday, July 5th, 1998, the radio technician was re-assigned to the Jacksonville area fires and support of both bases was given to us. We needed to order more phone lines and repair or re-configure radios at the bases.

Another major problem was aircraft frequencies. Incident aircraft had been using a VHF frequency but Area Command wanted them on the AM Victor frequency, which is normally used. We placed an order for the needed equipment on July 3rd at 0300 hours. Because of delays in getting this kit, the Civil Air Patrol put into service two fixed wing airplanes with the aircraft link installed. These planes were to fly during high traffic times to assist with "flight following" communication. When the radio link arrived four days later, the Civil Air Patrol planes were released.

Due to the large fire activity in the state, we dealt with an Area Communications Coordinator and two frequency coordinators. This was very helpful in keeping interference to a minimum and getting requested equipment in a timely manner.

This fire assignment had many challenges. As on most fires I learned from this assignment. Communications never were up to the standard they should have been, although not because of effort or support. Management Teams like ours try to be as flexible as possible and make the best of what they have to work with. Along with local staff, we worked together to try and solve communications problems in order to serve the needs of incident management and lead to a coordinated mitigation of the Oak Head Complex Fire.