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Communications training gives fire fighters combat edge

Mon, 2nd February '09

Fire fighters, pilots and the organisations coordinating Veld fire fighting operations, sharpened up procedures at an intensive training session arranged by Working on Fire (WoF) in Tulbagh last week.

The aim of the training session, which involved three organisations, three helicopters, a spotter plane and a number of wild fire fighting crews, was to streamline and co-ordinate communications between organisations involved in wild Veld fire fighting.

Louis Venter, WoF Regional Air Operations Manager, said that WoF assisted Cape-Nature - responsible for fires in fynbos and protected areas, MTO Forestry - responsible for fires in commercial plantations - and the Cape Winelands District Municipality – responsible for fires on private land. "These organisations are essentially our clients, they call us out when they need help to battle fires. They all have well oiled fire fighting teams but the aim of the exercise was to practise working together."

The morning started early with a briefing session. Three fires would be simulated, one for each organisation. The fire line would be marked by flag bearers, no actual fires would be lit for the purpose of this exercise. Each organisation would call the WoF dispatch centre and request a spotter plane, a helicopter and Cape-Nature and MTO would also request a ground crew, for their fire. If there really were three separate fires, each would have their own spotter plane, but in this case there would only be one, as a common ground to air radio channel is used by all the parties.

The initial call outs were made. Dispatch then radioed the separate pilots and one at a time the helicopters with their specially trained 'Helitac' crews took off for "battle." The Helitac crews are specially trained to safely enter and exit a helicopter and attach the water 'bambi' buckets to the chopper once it has dropped them off at the fire line.

Each organisation formed separate Incident Command (IC) Teams which were in control of their own fires, communicating with the spotter pilot, their helicopter pilot and their ground crews.

The helicopters loaded their crews and took off, they dropped the crews off at the agreed place before loading water and approaching the virtual fire line, which was represented by three men holding flags.

It did not take long to for the different organisations to realise that, due to the short intervals between each helicopter's water drop and the small area with only one spotter pilot to communicate with the pilots, they would need to work together and treat this situation as one large fire. "The spotter pilot did not have time to relay each company's instructions to the helicopter pilots as to how they should approach, because as he finished with the first one the second one was already there," said Jos Badenhorst of MTO.

Representatives of each organisation banded together and formed a Unified Incident Command Team operating out of Wineland District Municipality's Incident Command Vehicle. Now only one person was communicating with the spotter plane on the common channel, while divisional commanders from the individual organisations were communicating with the ground troops on their respective company channels, which were coordinated through the Command Vehicle, making things much simpler.

"The communication aspect of the exercise was a huge success in that the organisations naturally decided to reorganise and work together as one team, a situation that worked very smoothly. As is often the case in a real life situation, situations develop that cannot always be planned for," said Venter.

Communication during a fire is more complicated than one would have thought. "There are too many people communicating about different aspects of the operation and they can't all be on one frequency as there would be too much communication and people would not get a chance to relay important information," said Venter. "However, operating on the different frequencies can get complicated, training exercises like this help to orientate everyone as to who they should be speaking to, and on what frequency. Interestingly during this exercise we established that certain frequencies were not programmed on some of the ground crew radios so we will have to sort that out," he said.

Johan Botha, Station Commander for Cape Winelands District Municipality, said they were pleased with the exercise. "Initially each organisation did its own thing, which was good as they must learn to understand their own mechanisms. Then the organisations naturally combined, which worked very well, the communication was very good between the three entities."

"Communication is one of the most important aspects of fire fighting, if it is not working it causes a lot of problems," said Botha. "In years before we used to each do our own thing and it was chaos. Now with the Incident Command Vehicle and the organisations communicating with each other decisions are coordinated and it's much more organised." he said.

Francois Gerber, from MTO was also pleased with the exercise's success. "It went well, communication is key when fighting fires and today it worked. We were very happy," he said.

Peter Viljoen, Cape-Nature's Conservation Manager for the Waterval Nature Reserve, where the exercise was held was also pleased with how the training day turned out. "It was definitely successful. We had to work on our communication and also our working together, and the training really helped that."

During the debriefing session each organisation and the pilots added a few ideas on how to make aspects of the exercises, like landing the ground troops, faster. "With a fire every minute counts and one of the key aspects of doing these training exercises is constantly working on methods to make our actions faster while still safe," said Venter.

As everyone was talking, we noticed smoke rising from the valley below. Within minutes the ground troops and helicopters had been mobilised and we were left with the faint sound of sirens and the clapping sound of helicopter blades disappearing into the distance.

* Working on Fire is a Government-funded programme, formed in 2003 to develop an integrated national wild fire fighting prevention and wild fire fighting capacity. WoF includes a job creation component with fire fighters being recruited from marginalized communities and put through extensive training programmes equipping them to become skilled veld and forest firefighters. They are deployed in teams of 22 as part of a co-ordinated national network of aerial and ground fire fighting resources. WoF supplies fire fighting services to the Forestry Industry in South Africa, the KZN Provincial Department of Agriculture and Environment, South African National Parks, Cape-Nature, Mpumalanga Parks Board, Fire Protection Associations, municipalities and various other organizations, and is available as a national firefighting resource in the event of disaster or potential disaster.

Over 50 firebases have been established throughout South Africa. Through the National Disaster Management Centre, WoF supplies helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to supplement local aerial firefighting efforts. The programme was established under the umbrella of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) underpinned by the National Veld and Forest Act of 1998 and the Disaster Management Act of 2002.
Photo: From left to right: Jaco van Zyl (Working on Fire Provincial Co-ordinator), Jacques Visagie (spotter pilot) and Louis Venter (WoF Regional Air Operations Manager) discuss logistics during an exercise in Tulbagh.
Photo: A helicopter fitted with a bambi bucket approaches the "fire line", marked by flag bearers, during an exercise at the Waterval base in Tulbagh. On the left is a team of wildfire fighters waiting for the helicopter to pass before approaching the fire line.

Issued by HWB Communications Pty Ltd.
On Behalf of Working on Fire
Contact: Evelyn John Holtzhausen
082 658 6007
evelyn@hwb.co.za

or

Val Charlton
Advocacy and Awareness Co-0rdinator
Working on Fire
082 378 9056
val@wofire.co.za



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