Squelching the long, hot summer
The long, hot summer of 2001 brought heavy fire activity to forests across North America. By mid-August, the United States was already running above its 10-year average for acreage affected by wildfire — more than 2.8 million acres — with the Southern region (particularly Texas and Oklahoma) and the Pacific Northwest region suffering the most activity. In Canada, by mid-August, there had already been more than 6,400 fires involving 1.5 million acres, with the strongest fire activity occurring in Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territory. British Columbia, however, was running below its average in August, with 1,041 reported fires involving 15,666 acres (24.5 square miles). One reason British Columbia is successful in beating the heat may be its firefighting organization and communications deployment.
Covering an area of about 227,800 square miles — about two-thirds of the entire province — British Columbia’s publicly owned forests are the lifeblood of its economy. That is why the B.C. Ministry of Forests takes forest fires so seriously. In an average year, it has to combat about 3,000 wildfires; half caused by lightning and half by humans. About 90 square miles of timber go up in smoke annually. It’s like burning money, as far as the B.C. economy is concerned.
To protect British Columbia’s far-flung forests effectively, the province has divided them into six “fire centers.” Each center has its firefighting teams, water-bombing aircraft and extensive support facilities — including radio communications. Meanwhile, the overall operation is overseen by the Protection Branch, based in Victoria. The PB is connected to field operations by an “administration network” that comprises voice and high-speed data services.
When it comes to providing radio support for British Columbia’s forest firefighters, John Flanagan is a key player. As a fire operations specialist with the Ministry’s Protection Branch, Flanagan is one of the people who provide two-way radio communications; both data and voice.
B.C. firefighting radio
With the majority of British Columbia’s population living within 200 miles of the Canada/U.S. border, a large, rural part of the province has limited communications infrastructure. As a result, “the Protection Branch has had to install over 325 mountaintop repeater sites across the province,” Flanagan said. Many of these repeaters are in remote locations, so equipment has to be delivered by helicopter. Once installed, the repeaters are meant to operate automatically, without human intervention and with only annual maintenance, if required.
Of course, a B.C. mountaintop is hardly the most hospitable of transmitter sites. That’s why each repeater is housed inside a protective Fiberglas “com shell.” The housing is guy-wired to the mountain’s rock face to keep the installation from blowing away and to prevent excessive ice and snow buildups.
Within the shell, there is a series of rechargeable batteries, a rack-mounted transmitter tuned to VHF highband, and either an omnidirectional or a dipole antenna array measuring a total of 10′ in length. As for power, 85% of the shells have externally mounted solar panels that feed the equipment inside. Where proximity allows, electrical transmission lines are tapped for ac power for the remaining 15% of the installations.
“The com shells tend to make the equipment last a bit longer, and give a higher probability of survival against the elements,” Flanagan said, “even though they still get hit by lightning or are blown off the mountain by 150mph winds or crushed under many feet of ice and snow.”
On the ground — and in the air
British Columbia’s firefighters tend to work in three-man crews; each equipped with two hand-held radios. Each vehicle is also usually equipped with a multichannel unit that covers fire, logging and other key radio frequencies.
The firefighters use a mixed bag of radios. “For the ground crews, we utilize a lot of ICOM F3 32-channel hand-helds,” Flanagan said. “We also have some older ICOM H19s and H16s, but presently we are getting rid of all the H12s. They were a great radio in their day, but they only have 12 channels. The minimum amount of channels required for our crews is 16. In the vehicles we utilize mainly TAD mobile radios.”
Meanwhile, on-board British Columbia’s helicopters and water-bombing aircraft, the crews use either Bendix King or Northern Airborne Technologies transceivers. “They’re great radios,” Flanagan said.
The frequencies
If you’re in British Columbia and you tune your receiver to between 160MHz and 170MHz, chances are you’ll hear the forest firefighters on the air. “The network [comprises] about 10 duplex frequencies spread out among the regions and three simplex frequencies, province-wide,” Flanagan said. “We also have a simplex frequency at 164.04MHz to manage planes dropping fire retardant, as well as channels between 122MHz and 129MHz for managing the air tankers. We also have additional frequencies that can be used in some areas but are not licensed for use in the entire province.”
The Protection Branch’s radio system is CTCSS tone-activated. Not only does this keep crosstalk to a minimum, but it also allows one region to activate the entire network when necessary.
Unfortunately, there’s one hitch to British Columbia’s radio system: It can’t be heard everywhere. On the ground, only 65% of the province’s land mass is covered. In the air, it increases to 70%. That is why the Protection Branch is increasingly turning to Globalstar satellite phones. With Globalstar, crews can be heard wherever they are, Flanagan said. Globalstar also makes it easy for air crews to get through to the control tower.
“They just phone in, rather than wait to cut through radio chatter,” Flanagan said. “This improves our communications when we provide aid to other provinces or U.S. states for a quick ‘splash and dash’ water-bombing run, by being able to call them up instead of programming-in their frequencies to our radios.”
Finally, the PB has started to deploy repeater sites that use Globalstar links. With these systems, there’s no need to string a number of terrestrial towers to forward the signal to them, Flanagan said. Instead, all his people have to do is install the repeater, then dial it up remotely from the Fire Center or from the PB’s Victoria headquarters.
Whenever a serious forest fire breaks out in British Columbia, the PB’s electronics experts map out a communications plan. The plan includes the frequencies to be used and the number of sets required, and it assigns a ministry technician to manage the network onsite. The radios are then dispatched to the scene as soon as possible, usually by air.
The number of frequencies available onsite is critically important. Typically, 150 radios might be used at one time. That’s why each group — ground crews, aircraft and medical — are given their own sets of frequencies. Otherwise, the resulting cross-chatter would make meaningful communications impossible.
When things get crazy, the Protection Branch can dispatch a communications trailer to the site. The trailer is one element of a nine-unit tractor-trailer “fire camp” that can be trucked in as needed. Resembling a “M*A*S*H*” unit, the fire camp also provides a warehouse unit, a kitchen trailer and a wash trailer — everything to support as many as 200 people onsite. Meanwhile, extra radios are available, in cases of 10, as needed, Flanagan said. Thirty-five cases are stored in Victoria for such instances, and more cases can be ordered from other provinces’ stock as required.
Firefighting radio
Without a doubt, it comes down to traffic management and coverage. Traffic is handled by deploying extra radios — or even a portable base station — as warranted. Coverage is a matter of mountaintop towers and satellite phones.
Do these two factors keep John Flanagan up at night? Not on your life. For him, and the rest of British Columbia’s Protection Branch, forest fires are a fact of life. That’s why they’ve developed such a sophisticated radio network to handle them, and why 96% of all forest fires are doused before they exceed four acres in size. Clearly, in British Columbia, two-way radio is making a difference.
Careless is a freelance telecommunications writer based in Ottawa, ON, Canada. His email address is [email protected].
