Hard work and planning mattered more than a roll of the dice when Las Vegas Fire and Rescue purchased a state-of-the-art, multipurpose incident command vehicle. Until recently, the fire department had been using a 1983 mobile home and had hoped to invest in a command unit that would be used more than once a year. With a mobile dispatch center as its backbone, the new unit will be used much more frequently.

“We want our community to feel good about their fire department,” says Asst./Deputy Chief Greg Gammon. “Everybody looks forward to us getting there if there's an emergency, but we want to be looked at as a community resource.”

Las Vegas Fire and Rescue covers 117 square miles of one of the country's fastest-growing cities with 640 personnel, of which 498 are in operations, and 15 — soon to be 17 — fire stations. In 2000, the department decided to replace its entire fleet of vehicles. According to Gammon, he started the process by making a list of all of the things the department wanted to replace.

“We knew we weren't going to get to replace everything, but we did get to replace all of our engines and our trucks because of the condition they were in,” he says. “Before Sept. 11, we didn't think it would fly to go to the city and say we needed a new mobile command post and it didn't, but we tried!”

However, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, changes happened more quickly based on awareness of communications interoperability failures between fire and police. The threat of potential failure grew when the FBI identified Las Vegas as a likely terrorist target because of its cultural attractions and tourist density.

Top of the line

The City of Las Vegas has been extremely supportive of the need for this type of a unit. “When we explained why we would need it, we went top of the line to best serve our community, and we appreciate our city's support,” says Gammon.

For example, the main dispatch center for the department is one block off the main street and if destroyed would cause serious problems for Las Vegas. With a new command unit, not only would incident command be on scene, but a backup dispatch capability would be a sensible consideration.

“I was given the leeway to go ahead and put together what I thought would be best for the fire department,” says Gammon. “I know a lot of other departments that invest this kind of money in mobile command units and have one or two big incidents a year that they get called out for. My goal was that we would design something that would handle any big incidents, but we could also use on a daily basis if we wanted to.”

He designed a command unit that would be divided into four parts: public information office, backup dispatch center, an operations center and restrooms. LDV Inc. of Burlington, Wis., designed and built the interior and installed the communications and electronics. Pierce Manufacturing of Appleton, Wis., was used for the body and chassis design. The two companies had worked on police command vehicles before, but this was their first fire department unit.

The front portion of the unit is for the public information office. “We have a PIO that used to operate out of a van with all of his equipment. It gets so darn hot here in the summertime and our PIO is very active, so this unit could be taken to any working incident and he would have his own office there for media relations.” The PIO office has its own door to avoid disrupting the other three areas.

The second section is the backup communications center with three dispatching consoles, followed by a restroom facility. “One of the big problems, even when I was a firefighter I had the same complaint: We would get to the scene, you're there for an hour and there's no place to go to the bathroom,” says Gammon.

The back portion of the mobile unit is the operations center, also with a separate access door. The room has a table and is set up for chief officers to discuss strategy and tactics. Gammon also explained that if a family is burned out of their house, the rear portion of the command unit could offer an air-conditioned shelter during the incident versus trying to put the family in another cooled vehicle or under a tree for shade.

Gammon has scheduled the department's battalion chiefs in a training program to familiarize them with what the new mobile center offers: “I want to explain how I expect this unit to be used, because I want it called out all the time and so they are comfortable with it.”

That concept is familiar to LDV Sales Manager Larry LaGuardia. “The more these vehicles are utilized, the more familiar the operators are with it,” he says. “When a vehicle is placed in service and it's not used frequently, you have more operator errors. The more familiar people are with it, the better it will operate and the less likely problems will be.”

Interoperability importance

The rapid growth in the Las Vegas area has caused an evolution in terms of interoperability in the form of the Southern Nevada Communications committee, or SNAC. The committee includes other Clark County fire departments and agencies like the highway patrol and public works, but not the local police.

“The police needed the 700MHZ for data transmission because that was big for their department. It was really important to them that they go to 700 for that reason. They wanted us to go 700MHZ and it would be a great system, but we needed the 800MHZ because that's what the SNAC system is,” Gammon says.

The new communication equipment on the command vehicle has the capacity to communicate with the police on their 700MHZ system. “I believe the police are in the process of building a command vehicle right now,” says Gammon. “We didn't collaborate on it or pass ideas on it. We knew they were going with 700MHZ and we were with 800MHZ — we knew the components that we needed to patch them together.”

After the command vehicle was ordered, the city manager found an interoperability grant program run by FEMA and the Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The competitive grant process focused on funding demonstration projects that will explore uses of equipment and technologies to increase interoperability among the fire service, law enforcement and EMS communities.

Las Vegas Fire and Rescue was awarded one of several major grants, which meant $5.9 million for interoperability equipment on top of what the department had been allocated already from another grant. Gammon says that they have since ordered new top-of-the-line handheld radios that they will be put on the command unit for better compatability with the police department.

Las Vegas Fire and Rescue also can communicate with TRP 1000 radios, which are used by the finance director, leisure services, parks and recreation, public works, and other city offices. If the command unit had to go to a remote location and the mayor or other officials were inside the communications center, they could talk to every director in the city. “We shipped one of these TRP 1000 stations off to LDV and they installed it in this new vehicle,” Gammon says.

According to LaGuardia, “More attention has been paid to the interoperability side in this vehicle than many departments understand or appreciate. I think looking at the mobile application and expanding the capability of it to the entire city network is the biggest and most important feature about it.”

Video and weather monitoring

The command vehicle has a 25-foot telescopic mast with a camera. While they are making decisions, the command staff can raise and adjust the camera for what they want to see on two televisions inside. The closed-circuit video system has a powerful high-resolution zoom, which helps in decision-making from blocks away.

“We can have this unit respond to a high-angle rescue where we know it may take our special operations 20 minutes before they can get to the patient,” says Gammon. “In the meantime, we can zoom right in on where they are going to be going and get a lot of information on what equipment they are going to need. Prior to this, we had equipment in bundles and would take everything we might need. Now we can quicken our response because we know what we'll need to respond.”

The video is also time-stamped so they can follow up the incident with training. “We like to talk about the things we did well and what we can improve on. Being able to make videos of these calls is important,” says Gammon. “There's something firefighters can learn from every incident across the country. Whether it's here in Las Vegas, Los Angeles or Chicago, if a fire department had the ability to videotape the call they just worked on, they could break it down to see things they did well.”

LaGuardia says that while these types of units have been used previously, the quality of the electronic equipment has greatly improved because of technology from the military. “This particular camera is ultra — low light so you can see something when it's almost dark outside, virtually black. It's not an infrared, but it has the ability to see something at 0.1 lux, which is virtually pitch black.”

The unit also has a weather station to monitor the temperature outside, which is important since the Las Vegas heat can start to take a toll on the firefighters. By the time the command unit arrives on the scene, firefighters could already have been on the scene for 30 minutes, which is a long time in 108∞ heat.

Fire service to full-purpose

In the past, the fire service had little interest in this type of a mobile command unit, but according to LaGuardia, “Sept. 11 really turned that around for a lot of agencies. For the last 10 years law enforcement couldn't get one with a capital appropriation, but there were grants on the law enforcement side from the previous administration.

“I think fire and law saw the need for this type of vehicle, but it was an easy item to get cut out of the budget because it was a big-ticket item and it wasn't ‘necessary.’ The law enforcement side was getting command centers in a full-blown sense more so than fire, but what 9/11 did was change it from a nice-to-have vehicle to a need-to-have dedicated command center rather than a cramped station in a rescue truck…. Now it's a full-purpose command center.”

“All fire departments are first responders,” says Jim Parker, vice president for Pierce Manufacturing. “Whether it's a flood, hurricane or any kind of catastrophe. Since they are first responders, they need the equipment to communicate immediately. Fire departments have to be prepared for terrorism, but the everyday responder needs to be prepared for any kind of response. It's all about communications, the welfare of the firefighter and it's citizens.”

Several years ago, LaGuardia predicted that whoever showed up on the scene of a major incident with the most capacity and the best command center is the agency that will be in charge: “Whoever has the ability to see the most, communicate the most and respond the best, that's really what the community needs. So whoever has the best command center will be in charge.”

Las Vegas Fire and Rescue's new incident command unit looks like a winner for the department and the community.