Fire Camp Network Resilience: Lessons from the 2026 Season

What's Different About 2026

Several factors converge to make 2026 ICP communications particularly challenging compared to recent seasons:

More ICPs, faster stands-ups: With fires igniting earlier and spreading faster under record-low snowpack and drought conditions, incident management teams are stood up on shorter timelines. The communications infrastructure that might have had 48–72 hours to be properly installed and tested before operations started now sometimes has 12–18 hours. Speed-of-deployment and reliability under rapid setup conditions matter more than ever.

Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS): Pacific Power and PGE have both implemented proactive power shutoffs across Central and Eastern Oregon during red flag events — cutting grid power to reduce ignition risk from lines in high-wind, low-humidity conditions. Jefferson County saw PSPS events in early July. For ICPs and Emergency Operations Centers that depend on grid-tied equipment or grid-charged UPS systems, PSPS events can degrade communications infrastructure at exactly the worst time.

Smoke degrading Starlink performance: Dense smoke from multiple concurrent large fires is reducing Starlink throughput at some Oregon ICPs this season. While Starlink performs through light to moderate smoke without issue, extreme optical depth events — the kind associated with fire runs generating pyrocumulus clouds — can create measurable signal degradation. This isn't a theoretical concern; communications units at several Oregon ICPs this season have reported intermittent performance degradation correlated with smoke events.

Cellular congestion in fire zones: When a large fire forces evacuations, thousands of residents and responders converge on limited cell tower capacity. The same congestion that makes it hard for evacuees to call family members makes it hard for incident personnel relying on cellular hotspots for data connectivity. Cell-dependent backup communications plans have failed at several 2026 incidents.

Generator Dependency: The Single Biggest Failure Mode

The most common communications failure we see at fire ICPs is not equipment failure or satellite outage — it's generator-related. The network goes down because the generator ran out of fuel, a generator transfer failed, or the unplanned load of a new trailer or equipment connection tripped a breaker. Communications equipment that runs off generator power without adequate UPS backup loses connectivity during every generator hiccup.

The resilient approach:

• UPS-backed critical communications stack: The core router, bonded Starlink terminals, managed switches, and VoIP PBX should all be on a UPS sized for minimum 60 minutes of runtime at full load — not 15 minutes. This bridges generator fuel runs, transfer switch operations, and the inevitable moments when Logistics is scrambling to bring a second generator online. A 2000VA UPS for the core communications stack is a reasonable minimum; 3000VA is better for large ICPs.
• Fuel monitoring and alerts: A simple sensor on the generator fuel tank wired to the monitoring system sends an alert when fuel drops below a threshold. This is a $200 addition that has prevented complete communications outages at ICPs where nobody noticed the gauge until it was critical.
• Dedicated generator for communications: At large ICPs, the communications trailer or tent should be on its own dedicated generator circuit, not sharing with kitchen trailers, air conditioning units, or other high-draw camp infrastructure. Load sharing creates voltage fluctuations that are hard on electronics and creates single-point-of-failure dependencies.
• Manual restart procedures posted and trained: Every piece of critical communications equipment should have a laminated restart procedure posted on it. At 2 a.m. when the generator comes back online after a fuel event, the person who restores power to the comms stack may not be the COML — they need to know the correct sequence to bring equipment back up cleanly.

Smoke-Hardening Your Starlink Deployment

The conventional wisdom that Starlink is unaffected by smoke has been tested by 2026 conditions. While Starlink's Ku-band and Ka-band signals are far less affected by particulates than optical systems, extreme smoke events with very high aerosol optical depth can introduce measurable attenuation. More significantly, smoke reduces the dish's ability to track satellites through thermal convection effects in the air column above the dish.

Practical mitigations for smoke-prone deployments:

• Mount dishes as high as practical: A dish at 15 feet above ground is in cleaner air than one at 5 feet, particularly in low-lying terrain where smoke accumulates in the coolest air layer. Extending dish height by 10 feet on a portable mast significantly reduces smoke exposure during ground-level smoke events.
• Two dishes on different mounts: Position bonded Starlink dishes on separate mounts with physical separation — ideally 15–20 feet apart and on different sides of the camp if possible. Smoke behavior at ground level is uneven; a vehicle passing between the dish and the sky is more likely to obstruct one dish than both simultaneously.
• Monitor per-dish signal quality in real time: The bonding VPS concentrator shows per-link latency, packet loss, and throughput. When a Starlink terminal starts showing elevated packet loss — often the first indicator of smoke-related degradation — the communications unit can reposition the affected dish before performance becomes operationally impactful.
• Cellular backup pre-staged: Even in high-congestion fire zones, a cellular modem on a first-responder priority plan (AT&T FirstNet or Verizon's priority tier) maintains usable connectivity for low-bandwidth critical traffic — VMS, radio logging, eCatch-equivalent incident reporting — even when consumer cellular is congested.

Radio Logging Redundancy: The Record That Matters After the Fire

Radio communications logging on wildland fires is a legal and operational requirement. When a fatality investigation, a near-miss review, or a Serious Accident Investigation Team convenes, the radio logs are primary evidence. A logging system that failed during the most intense operational period — which correlates exactly with the conditions most likely to stress communications infrastructure — is worse than useless: it creates a documentation gap at the worst possible moment.

Resilient radio logging architecture:

• Local storage plus cloud sync: Radio logging recorders should write to local NVMe storage first — not cloud-only — so that a Starlink outage doesn't create a recording gap. Local logs sync to cloud storage when connectivity is available. During an outage, local storage continues uninterrupted.
• Separate UPS for logging equipment: If the logger shares UPS with other equipment and that UPS runs down during a generator event, the recording stops. A dedicated small UPS for the logging system — sized for the recorder's 10–20W draw — provides disproportionate resilience for its cost.
• Redundant recording on command channels: For Type 1 and Type 2 operations, command and air-to-ground channels should have redundant recording paths — a second recorder on critical channels, or a software-defined radio backup that records independently of the primary system.

Pre-Positioning for the Second Half of 2026

The 2026 fire season typically runs through September in Oregon and October in Southern Oregon and Northern California. With the season tracking as it is, the Pacific Northwest should expect significant continued ICP activity for another 10–12 weeks. Fire agencies, IMTs, and contractors who don't already have communications packages pre-positioned and tested for this season should be doing so now.

Richesin Engineering's ICP communications kits — bonded Starlink with cellular backup, UPS-backed core network, VoIP PBX, and radio logging integration — are available for rapid deployment anywhere in Oregon and Alaska. We can have a fully operational ICP communications infrastructure in place within hours of a dispatch call. If you're an IMT, a county emergency manager, or a fire agency planning for Type 1 or Type 2 incidents through the remainder of 2026, contact us now rather than when the dispatch comes.