School of Hard Knocks

Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Donny Jackson

Every Four Years, there are events — the Olympics, presidential elections and soccer's World Cup — that become the focus of media attention for their duration — and their aftermath — and cause observers to reflect upon historical references as a means of determining whether progress has been made since the last time the transcendent event occurred.

The remarkable pageantry and eager anticipation surrounding such scheduled happenings contrast starkly with the tragedy and dread associated with the recent Southern California wildfires that destroyed more than 500,000 acres, causing several hundred millions of dollars in damage and 10 deaths. However, like the aforementioned quadrennial events, the 2007 siege has allowed state and local officials to assess their agencies' progress in responding to such disasters after a remarkably similar set of fires ravaged the area in 2003.

“There were more fires this time — seven main fires instead of four main fires — and they went over a six-day period of time instead of a five-day period of time,” said Chris Hinshaw, manager of the wireless communications division for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, which oversees the San Diego-Imperial County Regional Communications System (RCS). “Approximately the same amount of acreage was lost, but there weren't nearly as many fatalities or injuries.”

One key reason for the reduction in human suffering during the 2007 fires was better communication among the responding agencies and with the public — a noticeable difference compared to 2003, when issues regarding operability, interoperability and public information plagued the response effort.

In fact, several improvements in the ensuing four years — some made as a direct response to the 2003 fires — proved to have a positive impact on communications during the 2007 siege.

“Obviously, things didn't go perfect, because I don't think anything can go perfect in these type of events, but I'm thoroughly impressed,” said Chet Ashbaugh, Riverside County's fire communications manager. “From what I've seen over the previous years, a lot of [the difference] is the dissemination of information and that some of these groups are meeting and working well together.”

IMPROVED INTEROPERABILITY

Indeed, there were significant problems in 2003 regarding various agencies' ability to communicate and coordinate their response efforts. Much of the difficulty stemmed from the fact that federal and state forestry services operate on conventional VHF systems, while most of the San Diego-area first responders operate on 800 MHz trunked systems.

“Some of those issues have been taken care of by obtaining each other's permission to use each other's frequencies and then gaining the radios to use those frequencies,” said Dave Sinclear, forest fire chief at Mendocino National Forest.

Sinclear also said he did not hear complaints about frequency coordination, which was a “major issue” in 2003. Ashbaugh agreed, noting that the only frequency-coordination problems he heard about were minor in nature.

Hinshaw said the cooperative efforts of groups such as the Law Enforcement Assistance Network and the San Diego Fire Chiefs Communications Committee have made a big difference in the level of communications interoperability in the area. Both groups existed in 2003 but were in their infancy. Today, after five years of regular meetings, the impact of such groups has yielded tangible improvements in interoperability for both day-to-day and large-incident responses, Hinshaw said.

“Everybody's a lot more comfortable working together than we were in the past — there's been a level of trust built up between the agencies,” he said. “The technology itself hasn't really changed, although the availability of the technology — through increases in capacity — has changed. But the users' knowledge of, use of and comfort level with interoperability has increased markedly.”