December 03, 2015
(Courtesy Ralph O. Barnett, III, US DHS OEC) The United States Forest Service and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources have released a report on the August 19, 2015 Twisp River Fire that took the lives of three firefighters. Bill Schrier shared the links with us and included the following comments regarding the report:
"Radio issues are cited 10 times in the report. At first I was a bit startled by this, because I know the local volunteer departments there, the DNR and USFS all use VHF and regularly interoperate. As I read the report, however, it is clear the deaths occurred early in the incident, probably before a good communications plan had been established, so each agency was probably initially operating on their own assigned VHF frequencies. There is also a citation about overuse of a single frequency and the confusion that caused. The engine carrying the firefighters headed in the wrong direction (north) on a dead end road and was told to reverse course. I'm not immediately sure how having broadband data available would have helped this, or what voice radio procedural improvements might help – the procedural improvements will probably come as recommendations in the future more comprehensive report."
This report was published by the US Forest Service and the Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources:
Good summary of it from the Seattle Times: