~Toughbooktalk~

Someone nailed his main fiber line that feeds his entire area. The ONLY services that are working are text messaging to his cell phone.

911 is down, hospitals are down, basically ALL land line based systems and all voice cell based systems.

I'll update when I can but this is why he is hard to reach in case anyone may have been wondering!

Thanks!

I just talked to Jeff via an old copper based system and they are almost back up and running.

Thanks!

Thanks for the heads up. I was getting concerned...

Here is a news article: http://lostcoastoutpost.com/2015/sep/3/ ... oldt-coun/

When Jeff get's back online I'm sure he'll find more pinpointed articles to share!

From July 1st... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015 ... -unabated/

Another: http://www.times-standard.com/general-n ... santa-rosa

Seven 911 call centers were affected by the outage, McGuire said. The lawmaker said he was concerned that one damaged fiber optic cable could cause so much disruption for residents, businesses and other telecommunications companies.

This covers it......not bad for a "lawmaker".

Early scramble got all/some 911 re-routed to CALFIRE command center. I worked there as a fire dispatcher when the 911 information was being gathered. Pre-911 for this area.
minor asides:
1. Some ambulances were still throw 'em in the back and go.
2. Triangulation was by fire look-out when the smoke got high enough.
3. Later they gave us computers but no programs.....afraid someone would break one. But that's another story.

My carpal tunnel flared up with the texting. I hate texting from a telephone. Bluetooth keyboard on a sling maybe.

I heard several dispatches to wrong addresses, immediately corrected by responding units....they know their area. The point is 911 feeds GPS to CAD. (computer aided dispatch)

Dispatchers don't need to know the area because they have CAD. HELLO! ---wake-up call.

My Assistant Chief and I did our own mini-scramble....we dispatch by cell. We were getting triple calls and bounce back during our tests. In an area like this batteries are the limiting factor. We had our little group listening all day. Normally a pager or cell/page would tell 'em to turn on their radio. Since our group of volunteers work outside, long term outage is a real problem battery wise. 95% off grid.

Our biggest emergency for the day was stray cattle.

Emergencies services handled it very well despite the handicaps.

That's enough for now. Four of the strays are in my corral. Jennie, 4 stock dogs and a ATV.

Good job..
We take all that stuff for granted now.
It's interesting to hear how it was done before all these newfangled gadgets.

On a lighter note...

We dispatched from the "TUB".
The county was broken into grids:
1.Same access.
2.Same terrain.
3.Same fuel type.
4.No more than 6 miles wide/tall.
5.This was put on a map with adhesive lines.
6.Each district (Battalion now)started top right like a6 a5 a4 a3 a2 a1.
Then.................................................................a7 a8 a9 a10 etc.
7.Indexed cards roughly 10" x 10" filled the tub. Cards listed first available aircraft, helicopter, engine,dozer unit,fire crew.
8.Dispatch by weather. High dispatch was 1 Battalion Chief,1 Airco, 2 Airtankers,5 engines,1 or 2 dozers,2 fire crews oh yeah the helicopter when we got modern.
9.Mr. Index Card listed closest available unit on out with travel times. Bearing and distance from several air bases.

A lot of research and actually doing response simulations was done to each Response Area. Card had access instructions, maybe combination lock info,cross streets yada yada.

The big map had all the look-outs with a azimuth circle and a retractable string...magnet on the end. Map was overlay-ed on sheet metal and hinged to the wall for maintenance. Break a string, pull a pin and swing the map out.

So two look-outs call in a fire.....and you can pull two strings and have the fire with-in 40 acres we figured. Check the response area, wheel around pull the card and set up the dispatch.
GROUP QUICK CALL
THE FOLLOWING UNITS RESPOND TO ALPHA 6 SECTION 10 24N 12W......
1117
AIR ATTACK 110
TANKER 92
TANKER 94
LAYTONVILLE BOTH ENGINES
LEGGETT BOTH ENGINES
ROCKPORT (CLOSED NOW AND SHEEP LIVE IN IT) TRADED FOR A HELICOPTER
DOZER 1142
PARLIN FORK CREW 1 AND 2

The air attack base had a list in the tower and would give pilots bearing and distance as they scurried out the door. In fact most/all stations had maps of there areas.

Seems like a lot of stuff moving but radios can call it off.

An expert would say I am using a mix of new and old and they would be right. BUT the tub never broke.

Next time I'll tell you about magnets.

Cool