overview of california wildfire / fire mutual aid dispatch systems

united states forest service - each forest has its own dispatch center
- requests for more help flow thru "South Zone" and "North Zone" - and
probably via the USFS state office and via NIFC also - usfs state
office is at 1323 Club Drive Business: 707-562-8737 Vallejo, CA 94592
After Hours: 530-226-2800 (NOPS) (firstname.lastname@usda.gov) - [oh
looky there - north ops (north zone) is the control point after hours]

note - 'north zone' is located at redding - both usfs and cal fire
dispatchers are present

note - 'south zone' is located at riverside - both usfs and cal fire
dispatchers are located there

bureau of land management - fire units are dispatched via wide area
shared communications centers at susanville and san bernardino and
porterville - mutual aid flows via 'north zone' and 'south zone' or
maybe via the blm state office

national park service - fire units are dispatched by park comm center
or a shared comm center or a wide area comm center - mutual aid flows
via 'north zone' or 'south zone' or maybe via the state office of nps

cal fire - basically each county has its own fire dispatch center -
mutual aid flows via the state cal fire command center - maybe - or
maybe via north zone and south zone - maybe it depends if its an
aviation resource versus a ground resource etc

local and county FDs - mutual aid flows via OES or north zone or south
zone - there are also county control points / OES control points all
over the state - they go into action when structural fire departments
need large amounts of help - maybe in a conflagration or quake or nuke

note - there are millions of mutual aid agreements between all the
various FDs in California - they control the movement of fire forces
during everyday emergencies - and local dispatchers tend to those
matters

note - the OES state control point is colocated with cal fire state
control point in mather - they primarily control the oes engines -
they dont have any of their own aircraft

bottom line - there are multi layers of control and coordination

could be much simpler if there was just 1 control point per county -
but that would not work great with the usfs nor their aircraft - so
there is a hybrid system



--
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