201906.14
0

5 things to know about the new regional firefighting coordination center

by in News

Officials on Thursday, June 13, dedicated the new Southern Region Interagency Operations Center — Southern Ops for short — where firefighting resources are being coordinated for large wildfires and other disasters involving multiple agencies from the Sacramento area to the Mexico border.

The 12-acre site just east of March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County replaces an approximately two-acre site on Mulberry Street near downtown Riverside. It has 72,500 square feet of work space on federal land deeded to Cal Fire in 1991.

  • The Southern Region Interagency Operations Center in Riverside County, where multiagency responses to wildfires and other disasters are coordinated, opened May 6, 2019, and was dedicated with a ceremony June 13. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • Dispatchers at the new Southern Region Interagency Operations Center have updated software that allows them to track and deploy resources more quickly. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • Sound
    The gallery will resume inseconds

  • Magnets on a map at the Southern Region Interagency Operations Center show where fire engines, aircraft, hand crews and bulldozers are deployed in the southern part of California. Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • These cards at the Southern Region Interagency Operations Center are used to track the location of fire engines and bulldozers, among other equipment, on fires and other disasters. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • Space at the former location of the Southern Region Interagency Operations Center was a problem, but not at the new site near March Air Reserve Base. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • A radio tower is the most visible feature of the new Southern Region Interagency Operations Center off Cactus Avenue east of March Air Reserve Base. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • Space at the former location of the Southern Region Interagency Operations Center was a problem, but not at the new site near March Air Reserve Base. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

  • Fire officials stand in the dispatch center at the Southern Region Interagency Operations Center, where multiagency responses to fires and other disasters are coordinated. The map allows officials to track resources. (Brian Rokos, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

of

Expand

Here is what else you should know about Southern Ops:

Who works here?

Officials from Cal Fire, the state Office of Emergency Services, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of the Interior and state Department of Fish & Wildlife began working there May 6.

“The (uniform) patches you see in the room today vary, but the mission is the same: Support our citizens to combat their emergencies as their lives are disrupted to get them back to normal,” said Brian S. Marshall, state fire and rescue chief for the Office of Emergency Services.

Why is this center needed?

“We’re seeing fires like we’ve never seen before, and we’re seeing more fires,” Marshall said. “These emergencies know no jurisdictional lines. But you have to have a coordination center to move the resources.”

How will I be safer? 

Firefighting operations will be more efficient. Dan Johnson, Cal Fire’s southern region chief, said that in the past when big fires struck, officials had to bring in trailers to the Mulberry location for the extra employees to work in. That hampered communication. Now, everyone can be in the same room. And there’s updated technology.

“The technology that is here today will allow us to move faster and be able to get the resources where our firefighters are needed. More people in the same area so you can make that instant connection with somebody — ‘We need a helicopter to this fire’ (for example),” Marshall said.

What’s high tech?

Dispatchers’ computers use the latest software that allows them to more easily and quickly track and deploy resources such as fire engines, aircraft, bulldozers and hand crews. Cameras in fire areas can feed images — what officials call “intel” — onto giant monitors at Southern Ops.

What’s low tech?

Officials used push pins and cards affixed to a wall at the Mulberry site to track the location of resources, and list the radio frequencies on which communications are being run at a given disaster. That low-tech computer backup is present again at the new location, except on a wall many times larger.

A giant map of the state on which active fires and resources are pinpointed covers most of a wall in the dispatch center.

“This provides a better visual representation of what incidents we are supporting with resources,” said Cal Fire Division Chief Jackie Williams.