11,000 homes burned in Los Angeles

11,000 homes burned in Los Angeles over 1 year ago

lets assume that 11,000 homes are on fire in boston mass

mutual aid would come in from all over new england

what radio channels would they use?

massachusetts has a fire mobilization plan - basically it says that
each county will form up task forces of approx 5 units each - each
task force will have a leader who talks to MEMA either on 151.145 R or
on the MEMA VHF network or via cellphones or maybe via satellite phone
or maybe via the state trs

'convoy' / 'travel' radio channels are undefined iirc - but maybe 1 FG
channel from each county could be used or the Itacs or the Utacs or
VTACs could serve as travel channels

no channels are designated as 'air to ground' (a/g) channels afaik -
but the fcc has allocated a half dozen channels at 700 mhz for use as
a/g channels - unknown if anyone in New England has any of those
channels programmed in their radios

Most counties have a few radio channels allocated as county wide
fireground channels - but many of these are low power simplex channels
- and maybe none of them have formal fcc statewide authorizations -
some might be used for other purposes across Massachusetts - in fact
most are probably not clear statewide

so the million dollar question is - what channels will be used for FG
ops when all the fire trucks in New England respond to Boston?

the VFIRE and the VTAC channels are pretty clear statewide - except
for wilmington fd on 154.2875 R ; and hampden county on 154.28 ; and
southern worcester county on 154.265 and 154.295 - the UTAC channels
should be clear statewide but Topsfield FD uses 453.4625R iirc - the
ITAC channels should be clear statewide and the 50 interops channels
at 700 mhz are probably clear statewide

HOWEVER - there are only 3 or 4 VTAC channels - and there are only 4
UTAC channels - and there are only 5 ITAC channels

there is 1 or 2 statewide 800 conventional channels for disaster ops -
maybe COMM 1 and COMM 2

there are maybe 20 interops channels on the state TRS - but those are
all trunked channels on the trunking repeaters

very few of the units have 700 mhz channels afaik - very few have 800
mhz channels

bottom line - we are looking at 1,000 fire trucks using 50 radio
channels for FG ops - this will not work well - especially with no
plan in place

lets look at some conflicts -

153.89 - hampshire county FG channel - Brockton FD FG channel

453.75 - plymouth county mutual aid - worcester county mutual aid

453.95 - plymouth county mutual aid - north reading fd

460.10 - D14 FG - UMass Boston

460.6125 - D5 FG - Fitchburg FD tac

487.3875 - D5 FG - Ashland FD input channel

155.805 - Berkshire County FDs interior channel - Uxbridge FD - Amesbury LG

158.805 - Berkshire County FDs south FG channel - Newbury FD input
channel - Abington LG

453.1125 - Franklin County FDs Tac 1 - Berlin FG

lots of potential conflicts there