California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
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| California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection |
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| Established | 1905 |
| Staffing | Career |
| Strength | 3,800 permanent 1,400 seasonal 4,300 inmates 8,200 volunteers[1] |
| Stations | 228 owned/operated 575 operated |
| Engines | 336 owned/operated 759 operated |
| Trucks | 38 |
| Rescues | 215 |
| Bulldozers | 58 |
| Airplanes | 23 airtankers 13 tactical planes |
| Helicopters | 11 helicopters |
| EMS Units | 63 paramedic units |
| EMS Level | ALS |
| Fire chief | Ruben Grijalva |
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) or Cal Fire is the State of California's agency responsible for the administration of the state's private and public forests. It is often referred to as The California Department of Forestry, which was the name of the department before the 1990s. In the 1970s and before, it was known as the California Division of Forestry. They also provide firefighting capability to prevent and extinguish wildfires in the state's forests. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is also the largest full service all risk fire department in the Western United States and operates more fire stations year round than do the New York (FDNY), Los Angeles (LAFD), and Chicago (CFD) fire departments combined.
CDF is part of the State of California, Resources Agency, an entity overseeing components of state government including the Department of Parks and Recreation, Department of Fish and Game, and the Department of Water Resources. The Department or Forestry works with employees of California Conservation Corps for firefighting and vegetation management. CDF uses inmate labor of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to assist with fire suppression and logistics. Programs to control wood boring insects and diseases of trees are under forestry programs managed by CDF. The vehicle fleet is managed from an office in Davis, California.[2] The Department's Director is Ruben Grijalva, who previously served as State Fire Marshal and as Fire Chief of the City of Palo Alto.[3]
CDF operations can be viewed as fitting into two categories: Schedule B and others. Schedule B is defined as Resources Agency/CDF-funded. Examples of non-Schedule B activities include county fire departments run by CDF under contracts with county governments. From north to south, Butte, Tuolumne, Merced, and Riverside counties are examples of county fire departments operated by CDF under contract. Another commonly-heard CDF term is SRA which refers to State Responsibility Area: lands or area for which CDF has the primary responsibility to manage the public safety during a fire incident.
Starting on January 24th, 2007, CDF has changed its "informal" name to CAL FIRE. The purpose is to bring CDF's name in line with other state agencies such as Cal Trans and Cal Boating
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[edit] Mission
The CDF website states: "The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection protects the people of California from fires, responds to emergencies, and protects and enhances forest, range, and watershed values providing social, economic, and environmental benefits to rural and urban citizens."
[edit] Organizational structure
The most visible part of CDF operations is fire suppression. Operations are divided into 21 Operational Units, which geographically follow county lines. Each unit consists of the area of one to three counties. Operational Units are grouped under two regions: Coast-Cascade and Sierra-South.[4]
The Office of the State Fire Marshal is part of CDF and oversees activities including fire prevention, regulation of fire safety, and pipeline safety.[5] All gas cans sold in California, for example, must be approved by the Office of the State Fire Marshal and marked with the Office's seal.
A statewide CDF training academy is operated at Ione, east of Sacramento. The facility is contiguous to Mule Creek State Prison.[6][7]
[edit] The Operational Unit
Operational Units are organizations designed to address fire suppression over a geographic area. They vary widely in size and terrain.
For example, Lassen-Modoc Operational Unit encompasses two rural counties and consists of eight fire stations and 13 pieces of equipment. The unit shares an interagency dispatch center with federal agencies including the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. An interagency center contributes to economies of scale, supports cooperation, and lends itself to a more seamless operation. The area has fragmented jurisdictions across a large rural area along the Nevada and Oregon state lines.[8]
Riverside Operational Unit is one of the larger units with 95 fire stations and about 230 pieces of equipment. Some of these stations belong to the county fire department, which is operated by CDF under contract. The unit operates its own dispatch center in Perris. Terrain served includes urban and suburban areas of the Inland Empire and communities in the metropolitan Palm Springs area. The area includes forested mountains, the Colorado River basin, the Mojave Desert and Interstate 10.[9]
Lawmakers in Sacramento have mandated that every Operational Unit develop and implement an annual fire management plan. The plan will develop cooperation and community programs to reduce damage from, and costs of, fires in California.[10] One metric used by fire suppression units is initial attack success: fires stopped by the initial resources, (equipment and people,) sent to the incident.[11]
[edit] Technologies
CDF uses several enterprise IT systems to manage operations. Altaris CAD, a computer-assisted dispatch system made by Northrop Grumman, is employed to track available resources and assignments.[12] Each Operational Unit has a stand-alone system which includes detailed address and mapping information.[13] Information about fires is batch-uploaded into a statewide statistical analysis system which is used to drive improvements to fire suppression and prevention. Resource Ordering Status System is used to cooperatively manage equipment and staff from other agencies at campaign-type fires.
The three largest state government land-mobile radio systems would include California Highway Patrol, California Department of Transportation (CalTrans), and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Any of these three systems might be considered largest depending on what constitutes the factors of "largest." If some combination of the number of mobiles, overall number of transmitters, total number of users, annual number of incidents, number of radio transmissions carried, or geographic area served were considerations, one of these three would be largest.
CDF is a major user on the State of California, Department of General Services, Public Safety Microwave Network (PSMN). The network is used for the state's Green Phone telephone network, a telephone system used for communications between public safety agencies. The system primarily serves state agencies. Intercoms between dispatching centers use audio paths supported by microwave radio. These intercoms usually appear as circuits on communications consoles in dispatching centers.
Aircraft are a prominent feature of CDF, especially during the summer fire season. Both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft are employed.[14] Helicopters, or rotary-wing aircraft, are used to transport firefighting hand crews into fire areas. They also drop water and retardant chemicals on fires. Fixed wing aircraft are used for command, observation, and to drop retardant chemicals on fires.[15]
[edit] Telecom history circa 1970
As of the early 1970s, CDF systems used VHF "high band" (151 MHz repeater/159 MHz mobile) stand-alone repeaters on State of California communications sites. CDF was an early adopter of hand held radios but the radios did not perform to modern public safety system standards. The systems served their purpose but were not originally engineered for hand held coverage because of the enormous coverage areas, the difficult terrain, and the lack of infrastructure to support a complex system. Sites had commercial power but many lacked reliable telephone lines or microwave radio connectivity. In terms of geography, CDF served mostly rural areas and the radio repeater sites to cover these areas were located in remote wilderness. Voting was in its infancy and, in CDF repeater systems, was unheard-of. Users understood this and used radios in entrepreneurial ways. For example, if an engine arriving at a fire could not find a spot where they had a radio path to reach dispatch, they would call another engine that could communicate and ask the staff to relay their message. The unit might see if they could get through by switching to an alternate channel, such as State net, which had repeaters at different sites, and consequently, a different coverage area.
The smallest geographic division of CDF Fire is the Operational Unit. Examples of Operational Units are Lassen-Modoc Operational Unit and Tuolumne-Calaveras Operational Unit. Operational Units are named for counties served. In the 1970s Operational Units were referred to as Ranger Units. Ranger Units were grouped into six CDF Regions, which may have been called Districts in earlier years. Radios were configured in a hierarchy with channel selections for Local (serving a Ranger Unit), District/Region, and State nets. By switching to the State channel, any two CDF radios statewide could communicate. Fire units from different Ranger Units but within the same district or region could communicate on the Region channel.
[edit] Signaling
1970s CDF systems used single tone or tone burst to select repeaters. The system had five tones statewide, allowing up to five repeaters in overlapping radio coverage areas on the same channel. Tones used, in order from tone 1 through 5, were: 1,800 Hz, 1,950 Hz, 2,200 Hz, 2,400 Hz and 2,552 Hz. Station ringdowns and some volunteer sirens were actuated using a Motorola selective calling scheme called Quik Call I.
During the conversion from tone burst to CTCSS in the early 1980s, Department of General Services (DoGS) craftsmen modified repeaters to work with either burst tones or CTCSS (sub-audible) tones. This allowed repeaters to be used with either type of signaling as the tone burst mobiles were swapped out for newer models.
[edit] Equipment
Like most State equipment, CDF used a mix of radios from several manufacturers varying from one contract bid to the next. Scanning, selectable tone burst, six channel transmit, and three channel receive were beyond the capabilities of most off-the-shelf mobile radios in 1970. Custom-made General Electric MASTR Professional hybrid tube/solid state mobiles were bought in one early 1970s contract. CDF was an early adopter of scanning: this radio incorporated General Electric's scanning feature, called Priority Search Lock Monitor.[16]
In the 1970s, at least some CDF repeaters were RCA Series 1000 units. These had solid state receivers and exciters with continuous duty tube final power amplifiers. They produced transmitter output powers in the range of 100-120 watts.
The earliest fully solid state mobile radios were used in the CTCSS conversion. They were 99-channel Midland radios. An early 1980s discovery was that users had to carry cards with lists of the channels. The radios had many channels and no alphanumeric display describing who you would talk to when the display said channel 65, for example. The Midland mobiles used flat, computer-hard-disk-style ribbon cable to connect the control head on the vehicle dash with the radio unit drawer. To improve reliability, some units used segments of discarded inch-and-a-half hose as a jacket to protect the easily-abraded ribbon cable.
[edit] Protocol
Hearing a distant voice from a radio speaker, it was unclear what path the caller was using to reach you. This was especially true of dispatch consoles, which routed audio from many channels to one or two speakers. Radio protocol provided that users announce which channel and tone they were using in order that the called party would answer on the same channel and tone. A typical transmission where an engine was calling, preparing to tell something to dispatch, might be phrased, "San Andreas, Forty Six Eighty Eight, Local Net, Tone One." This queued the San Andreas dispatcher to manually select Local, Tone One or L1 to answer.
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www.fire.ca.gov/about_content/downloads/Glance2006.pdf
- ^ State of California 1998 Telephone Directory, (Sacramento, California: State of California, Department of General Services, 1998).
- ^ Fraser, Debbie, CDF Training and Academy Course Catalog, March 2006, (Ione, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2006).
- ^ State of California 1998 Telephone Directory, (Sacramento, California: State of California, Department of General Services, 1998).
- ^ State of California 1998 Telephone Directory, (Sacramento, California: State of California, Department of General Services, 1998).
- ^ Fraser, Debbie, CDF Training and Academy Course Catalog, March 2006, (Ione, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2006).
- ^ State of California 1998 Telephone Directory, (Sacramento, California: State of California, Department of General Services, 1998).
- ^ Henson, C., Lassen-Modoc Unit 2005 Fire Management Plan, (Susanville, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2005).
- ^ Gilbert, M., Riverside Unit 2005 Fire Management Plan, Perris, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2005).
- ^ California Public Resources Code, Sec. 4130.
- ^ Gilbert, M., Riverside Unit 2005 Fire Management Plan, Perris, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2005); California Public Resources Code, Sec. 4130.
- ^ Fraser, Debbie, CDF Training and Academy Course Catalog, March 2006, (Ione, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2006).
- ^ Santa Clara Unit 2005 Fire Management Plan, Morgan Hill, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2005).
- ^ Hemet-Ryan AAB Capital Outlay Project: Relocation Or Replacement Analysis, (Sacramento: State of California, Department Of General Services, Real Estate Services Division, Project Management Branch, 2005).
- ^ Fraser, Debbie, CDF Training and Academy Course Catalog, March 2006, (Ione, California: State of California, Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2006).
- ^ General Electric no longer makes two-way radios.
