Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past | Hacker News Reader

Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past

theguardian.com

68 pointselemeno55 comments

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps.

These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial communications, and expensive ruggedized devices.

While this is purportedly the problem firstnet is supposed to solve, I'm skeptical that it will solve it, or that the other issues (technical and otherwise) blocking adoption will be overcome.

I'm not involved in firefighting, I just spend a lot of time with maps planning out hikes:

I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors.

As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despite what the original article says, this mapping process is already happening. You can see the very outlines updated daily, with lots of fine detail, on inciweb.

And the paper map doesn't run out of batteries!

Same in my experience, for both climbing and hiking paper maps and topos are much better than digital.

When I was in search and rescue, we made extensive use of paper maps. Nice rite-in-the-rain jobbers, useful in a downpour. And sometimes we'd need to take notes on them. With a pencil! In the rain! grumble grumble kids these days. Try that with a capacitive touchscreen...

I am one of the kids of these days, but I know absolutely nothing about anything so I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but I am genuinely curious:

if you have paper in the rain, can't you have a water resistant device? Generally, they are both thing that I wouldn't necessarily associate with doing well in the rain...

My phone works fine in the rain. The touchscreen is garbage, because it can't differentiate my finger from a puddle on the screen. Granted, there are pressure sensitive touchscreens out there. If you want a good map that you can take notes on, you'll need a custom app. In my experience, writing on screens is very fussy business. So you might be able to a custom app, custom hardware, maybe spending thousands per unit.

But, paper. I mentioned a brand name. It's wonderful stuff, nothing like the paper you're thinking of. This solution costs a few bucks per person.

https://www.riteintherain.com/

Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.

> Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.

WRT. paper vs. touchscreens and fire, I imagine two extra factors come into play. One, protective equipment may not play well with touchscreens (are there capacitive screen-friendly pads for gloves that won't burn off?). Two, heat in general. Phones and tablets don't like it all that much, and can easily start behaving weirdly and/or shut down when being used in a car in summer, much less next to an actual fire.

Try this: Put on your winter gloves, climb in the the shower, turn the water on ice cold, and see how well you are able to operate your iPad.

At least with paper maps and a #2 pencil, you have a fighting chance in those conditions.

Nowadays decent hiking maps are made of Tyvek or a similar material so they're waterproof. A water resistant device works too but not as well when there are raindrops on it. I guess the moisture messes with the capacitive screen, the device can also stop working at a really incovenient time. That can't really happen with a regular map.

I am a firefighter/EMR in California.

There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network).

Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device.

[1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.

> Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving.

Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.

One of the proposed benefits of 4G/5G is that they can make microcells that can do exactly that, with the client devices being regular phones.

Well, it seems ridiculous to say that, because there have been 3g microcells (openbsc, for example) forever. It seems bizarre that we couldn't have a switch in every truck that turns it into a mobile microcell for <$100. The backhaul is the problem, because normal microcells are connected to the internet via hardline IP communication . . . . which could be done with modern satellite. The problem is that if you are selling anything to any kind of government agency, you absolutely want them _not_ to be able to use any commodity component like a "cell phone"

Motorla sells LTE enabled radios, but changing from a narrowband air interface to a wideband one doesnt get you much, terrestrial can work in these situations, they dont need phone calls, they need radio and data communications - mostly data.

There is nothing in Part 90 that prevents a multi-band device, Motorola, Harris and Kenwood both sell multiband P25 devices (V/U, U/800, V/LTE, et al). Motorola, Harris and Kenwood (tait as well) also support multiple trunking/signaling systems on the same device as well.

What you're running into is agencies not wanting to interop - GMRS is a special case, because its a licensed by rule service (Part 95), but everything else, everything public safety and commercial can all be loaded in one radio, legally and technically (GMRS will technically work, its just not strictly legal - but the rules for Part 95 are widely flouted) - it takes agencies buying multiband radios (they're expensive) - and agencies willing to cooperate to share system keys (and encryption keys) which they loathe to do, because it means giving up control.

Interoperability is a huge issue with public safety, and it wont be fixed by broadband, it will only be fixed when a bunch of people die directly because of it, and then the public demand something be done - these agencies have no incentive to cooperate (quite the opposite, they might get less funding if they did).

Yes, there are multi-frequency devices, but they are all in the same "range" or "band" or "grouping" of frequencies (whatever it is we're calling that).

I'm talking about a combination hi-band, lo-band, GMRS, P25, paging, etc. radio. I should be able to tune National Weather Service on it if I want to.

When I talk about this, ham guys get all huffy about FCC this and that and what kind of anarchy do I want to live in. Whatever.

What I am telling you is that, on the ground, it's a shitshow (with regard to physical radios) and it's frustrating to know that it's a political problem, not a technical one.

You can order a radio with High VHF, UHF, 700/800, 900, LTE or with any of the two above, Harris has the (it does something we affectionately call DC-Daylight - aka, the entire EM spectrum), SG-XG100 I think does basically everything, 30MHz to 1000MHz.

Low Band is a special case, because of the sheer antenna size, which is huge, and unwieldily low band handhelds are also near useless.

Ignore the ham guys, they dont know much about part 90 (other than they are correct that the Baofeng Radios are probably not type accepted.).

It doesn’t help that the protocols are all proprietary and/or encumbered with patents. An open source version of Brandmeister would go a long, long, way.

None of the protocols are encumbered, P25 and DMR are both open standards - the audio codecs they use however, are not.

Brandmeister wouldn't fix anything in the public safety space as nothing in public safety is DMR.

Without much knowledge about the process: Is it a problem to have it handled via some centre? I.e. you're asking X to dispatch all of those requests for you which would free you up to drive? (And get either one of those calls connected directly to you as needed)

Exactly this. I spent decades as a FF/EMT and that's the way it was typically done.

I did however, often carry a Baofeng programmed with _all_ the services with which I was likely to interact as a backup: MedEvac, EMS, law enforcement and fire services. Yes, I am a licensed ham operator.

The problem is there is no national emergency interop frequency plan, each state, county and city does things differently.

DHS publishes the National Interoperability Field Operations Guide which includes a national channel plan for calling, simplex and deployable repeater operation.

Each state/county/etc. may have different licensing, but they are also encouraged to program the NIFOG channel plans when space is available on radios.

> The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands.

My phone that connects to multi band WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, wireless charging and 2g, 3g and 4g disagrees with that statement.

I really hate seeing articles like these. There are many reasons why groups may not choose to participate in the endless technology death march that is updates and instability.

Is the new fancy tool reliable? Does it truly fit into its adopter's workflow? Is it faster and simpler and more reliable than existing tech? Or is it just shiny and backed by some idiot VC and they're trying to push adoption prematurely?

This idea that its bad that something or someone isn't high-tech needs to die.

Agree, paper maps and two-way radios are both technology. The burden is on any other technology to prove they are superior.

I love articles like this, just because I can't wait to see them satirized on n-gate.com. My favorite moment was when they said radio allows only one person to talk at once (like that's a bad thing).

But yeah, how did you get from the bedroom to the kitchen today? Was it by futuristic nucular (sic) hoverboard, or did you use million-year-old "walking" technology you damned stuck-in-the-past Luddite?

Firefighting is one of those things that takes place when various types of shit are hitting the fan. No one involved should hitch their wagon to the availability of any advanced-ish technology, including an internet connection.

I want to take whoever wrote this and throw 40lbs of gear on their back (which is light, but that's just so they don't fully break on the trip) and have them go hump with me it over the roughest imaginable terrain and let them carry all the tech and batteries they want to their heart's content while we go cut fire lines. After they see how useless and unnecessary all that crap is, and how it goes tits up from being dropped/smashed/heated, and how unnecessary it is to do the job they need to do, I'd love to see them pack up their rucksack for the next trip. I'll bet a LOT of money they don't take any of it.

Firefighters don't need a fucking ipad to cut lines. They need a pickaxe, chainsaws, shovels, etc.

Technology in this type of application is almost never more efficient or better than existing methods, but it gets used when it reduces training costs enough to be deployed.

I worked EMS. If I needed to find a house fast and reliably, I'll use the custom fire department's map binder over any technology solution you can come up with any day and it will be superior in essentially every way.

You're exaggerating a little but I agree. I think your example with the FD map binder is a little weird though because that is the one thing that is worse than a maps app with real-time traffic updates. That's a killer feature especially during rush hour. The suburban department I volunteered in was known for having the second worst traffic in the US behind Los Angeles, so it's a little bit of a special circumstance.

Northern Virginia?

PNW

I worked in an area where mapping apps are notoriously unreliable. There is no real traffic here but there's a lot of addresses that can't be found via any mapping app.

Real time updates are only gonna work when you have cell reception, which isn't true for a very large fraction of the time here.

Flashpoint for paper is 450°F. My tablet shuts down if I take it for an afternoon at the beach and forget to keep it under the umbrella.

They aren’t stuck in the past. None of the solutions presented work reliably under extreme conditions so far.

As someone who has helped with a fair share of controlled burns... yes: two-way radios on a repeater with backup batteries is excellent.

Any leftover budget is better spent on preventative measures, like clearing brush or controlled burns, not iPads.

And raking the forests, of courses.

Okay, so after 100s of millions of dollars we'll have:

Certified intrinsically safe (why not?) and fire resistant tablets with bluetooth and cell radios. We'll pay verizon to put up towers in the middle of nowhere. We'll redesign gloves to be touch sensitive. Redesign helmets to have bluetooth and speakers. Custom software all round. Etc.

After all said and done, we'll realize walkie talkies and paper maps are more reliable.

In emergency situations, having gear with as close to 100% uptime and 100% reliability as possible far outweighs something new and fancy that gets stuck on an update, license issue or needs a reboot.

People who dont risk their lives trying to save others in real, mortal danger, truly need to stop thinking their opinion holds weight in these situations.

Firefighter works 24 hour shift, iPad battery dies after 18

Clearly, Firefighters are suffering from a critical lack of Cisco WebEx.

It seems that the less there is something that can break in a disaster response situation, the better.

I’m a bush fire fighter in Australia. We do make use of technology and we’re bringing more in but reliability and dependability is _so critical_.

All of my brigades trucks have iPads which are useful for accessing maps, running collaborative fireground apps like collector, firemapper or rfsBuddy, etc. All of these things are “nice to have” though. We don’t rely on it for anything we must have, because it fails from time to time.

We use apps like Rover and Bart to manage call outs. They’re great because we can see who’s responding, how far away they are, etc. We also all carry ancient pagers because they’re bulletproof and mobile phones aren’t. They’re served by a hardened transmission network where every tower has backup power in case the grid goes down.

Tech is great but in extreme environments like a wildfire I want to have a paper map with me and I want to know how to use it. Just in case.

Given the other thread currently on hn front page about how someone died when a hospital system was taken over by ransomware...

Paper maps and walkie talkies might be a good thing.

So, ATAK already does this with pretty good success [0] but it generally works best with full connectivity.

You can deploy it over mesh technology for places that don't have Internet connectivity, and then backhaul the data to a monitoring center.

Of course it has those LEO/MIL ties which might really be holding it back.

0. https://www.govtech.com/em/safety/Corona-Fire-Department-Enh...

Follow on from this...

https://www.civtak.org/2020/08/20/the-future-of-firefighting...

https://www.civtak.org/2020/08/18/tak-aircraft-on-grizzly-cr...

yeah none of my tech works properly in an emergency. honestly, everyone should have analog walkie talkies for when the cell network gets congested

I hope not to trivialize things too much, but firefighting almost seems like a RTS game, especially if one can get drones/satellite/etc to provide real time updates to the "game map".

Even if there is the command chain that disrupts direct communication with your "units", the communication down the chain could probably be automated from the interface.

They use helicopters and fixed wing aircraft as firespotters, its not a command and control data problem, its not even getting data out to the units problem, its an interop problem.

FF/EMT here. Love our radios. Super reliable. All the data stuff is crap. Our terminals and mapping are always losing connections. Same with paper maps. We still have big ones on our wall in the bay. Mandatory to look at it before we roll - we’ve added layers for hydrants and landing zones, etc. Best fire apparatus still have manual valves. All the electric and pneumatic stuff fails at the worst of time’s.

I do REALLY miss Nextel phone to phone though. That stuff was super useful.

Don’t get me wrong. I love tech. Retired Microsoft. Always have to have the latest. Apple Watch 6 on order. Can’t wait for Quest 2... but not on the foreground.

I do miss Nextel though. Did I mention that? Oh. And the InReach (and PLB) stuff is awesome for back country work.

Another "boeing still uses floppy disk" article, but this one reads like an ad for the company mentioned.

They answers their own question:

Emergency response units talked by two-way radio and sent each other text messages with photos of paper maps, said Kenneth Dueker, the director of Palo Alto’s office of emergency services. “Here we are right in the middle of Silicon Valley,” Dueker said. “Why am I using paper and pencil and a two-way radio when I should be using geospatial tools? It’s very 1920s, frankly.”

and few paragraphs later:

"Glitches in software and outdated maps have been reported in the warning systems used to alert people in the path of the flames during several major fires in the last year."

Yeah, but after you give this startup 50 million dollars, I'm sure their system will have no glitches!

For industrial firefighting I was impressed with the frequent ongoing innovation seen in decades of print volumes of trade publication Industrial Fire World.

Mostly non-college people with more worthwhile creativity in their field than typical research PhD's in their typical pursuits, too.

Industrial disaster is a lot different than wildfires in nature or a suburban environment, even though many _suburbs_ have grown up around industrial facilities.

Seems like there could still be a good benefit from more cross-pollination between those most dedicated to saving lives in either situation.

In addition to all the reliability & usability concerns others have pointed out, don't forget the time when Verizon enforced data caps during the Mendocino fire:

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/22/640815074/verizon-throttled-f...

> firefighting tech is stuck in the past

Utterly not my experience. I was heavily involved on the tech side of firefighting in Victoria, Australia for several years almost two decades ago. It was possibly the most tech-forward set of projects I’ve ever been involved in.

It was also probably the most interesting stuff I’ve worked on in my career.

FireSaaS is down, please try again later.

What do the military use?

Should it not just be very similar to them?

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