Redesigning the ICP Communications Network: Lessons from Oregon's 2026 Fire Season

What follows isn't a criticism of the agencies or individuals in the field. The people standing up ICP networks under pressure, in remote terrain, with equipment that may not have been touched since last season, are doing genuinely difficult work. This is about the systemic gaps that make their jobs harder than they need to be — and what a pre-planned, properly engineered communications infrastructure looks like as an alternative.

Problem 1: The Satellite Congestion Pile-Up

The single most consistent failure mode we documented across Oregon ICPs in 2026 was uncoordinated satellite deployment. At multi-agency fires involving state, federal, tribal, and contractor personnel, it was common to find four, five, or even six separate Starlink terminals operating at a single camp — each brought by a different agency, each attempting to serve its own users, and none of them coordinated at the RF or network level.

This creates two compounding problems. First, multiple Starlink dishes in close proximity, all pointed at the same satellite constellation, will negotiate for capacity in ways that degrade performance for everyone. Starlink's MPTCP-capable architecture is designed to aggregate multiple connections intelligently — but only when the uplinks are managed through a bonding appliance that load-balances traffic across them. Parallel standalone terminals competing at the same location perform significantly worse than a single properly managed multi-terminal installation.

Second, the networking behind each terminal is typically isolated. Agency A's Starlink connects to Agency A's router and serves Agency A's staff. Agency B's network sits right next to it, completely siloed. There's no shared infrastructure, no QoS management, and no way to prioritize critical incident traffic over general-purpose browsing. In an environment where ROSS (Resource Ordering and Status System) and ICS 209 submissions are competing with cell phone hotspot usage for the same satellite uplink, that lack of coordination has real operational consequences.

The fix is pre-designated satellite architecture: one lead agency deploys the satellite infrastructure and manages it as shared ICP infrastructure, with VLANs separating agency traffic, QoS rules protecting critical systems, and a proper firewall handling the uplink. Additional Starlink terminals from other agencies get folded into the bonded pool rather than operating as parallel isolated networks. This requires pre-season coordination, agreed-upon network standards across agencies, and a Communications Unit Leader who has authority over the satellite architecture — not just radio coordination.

Problem 2: Power Without Resilience

Almost every ICP communications setup in 2026 ran on generator power. That's expected — these are remote locations without grid access. The problem is that most setups had no meaningful UPS between the generator and the communications equipment, and generator maintenance windows were not coordinated with comms dependencies.

A generator that goes down for scheduled refueling — a 20-minute process — causes a complete communications outage if the network has no battery backup. Routers, switches, Starlink terminals, and radio gateway equipment need time to reboot, re-establish connections, and resynchronize before they're back in service. At a 2026 ICP in Deschutes County, a routine refueling cycle knocked the ICP network offline for 47 minutes because there was no UPS on the comms rack and no fuel-overlap protocol between the logistics section and the COML.

The standard we recommend: every ICP communications rack should have a minimum of 30 minutes of UPS runtime for core networking equipment — enough to cover any routine generator transition, and enough to survive a short unplanned outage without full comms loss. At ICPs where generator redundancy is available, the switchover should be automatic and tested before the incident, not improvised during it.

Problem 3: The Radio-to-Data Bridge Gap

Modern ICP operations run on two parallel systems that rarely communicate with each other effectively: the IP data network (ROSS, WebEOC, ICS 209, email, video) and the tactical radio network (VHF, UHF, P25, sometimes DMR). These systems are designed by different communities, managed by different personnel, and their interconnection — where it exists at all — is usually an afterthought.

The gap matters operationally when a crew supervisor on a radio net needs information that's only available in a web-based system, or when the COML needs to monitor a radio channel but the radio is in a different part of camp. It matters technically when agencies using P25 digital radio need to interoperate with agencies running analog VHF — a cross-band patch is a stopgap, but interoperability gateways that bridge digital radio protocols to the IP backbone are far more capable and increasingly available at reasonable cost.

Radio logging is the other half of this gap. Incident investigation and after-action review require accurate records of radio traffic. At most Oregon ICPs in 2026, radio logging was either manual (someone writing in a log book), nonexistent, or running on equipment that hadn't been calibrated or tested before the incident. Digital logging infrastructure — a dedicated radio recorder connected to each operational channel — costs a few thousand dollars per ICP deployment and provides a permanent, searchable record of every transmission.

Problem 4: Last-Minute Kit vs. Pre-Staged Infrastructure

There's a stark difference between an ICP that's been stood up by a team with a pre-configured communications trailer and an ICP where the COML is building the network from scratch with whatever equipment arrived with the overhead team. The former can have full communications operational in four to six hours. The latter often takes 24 to 48 hours — and the network that results is never as clean, secure, or well-documented as one built from a pre-planned design.

Pre-staging means more than just having equipment ready. It means having a rackmount system where every device is pre-configured for ICP use: VLANs defined, IP schemes documented, firewall rules in place, and a network diagram already drawn. When the trailer arrives on scene, the COML connects the satellite uplinks, powers on the rack, and has a functional network — not a pile of boxes to be figured out under pressure.

For Oregon agencies preparing for 2027, the pre-season window (October through March) is the right time to build or audit these kits, configure equipment, document everything, and run tabletop exercises that include the communications architecture — not just the incident command structure.

What Preparation for 2027 Looks Like

The agencies that had the smoothest communications this season were, without exception, the ones who'd done deliberate pre-season preparation: network audits, equipment staging, documented SOPs for the COML, and at least one pre-season exercise that stress-tested the comms setup. That preparation doesn't have to be built from scratch every year — it's an investment that compounds.

• Network design and documentation: A properly drawn network diagram, IP scheme, and VLAN structure for your ICP deployment, ready before the season starts
• Equipment staging and testing: Pre-configured rackmount communications kit, tested and verified before storage
• Power resilience planning: UPS sizing, generator coordination protocols, and automatic failover where available
• Satellite coordination agreement: Multi-agency protocols for shared satellite infrastructure rather than parallel isolated deployments
• Radio logging infrastructure: Dedicated digital recording for each operational channel

The best time to redesign your ICP communications network is right now — while the 2026 season is fresh, before the equipment goes back into storage and the lessons get lost in after-action reports that nobody reads. We've helped Oregon state agencies, tribal nations, and contractor teams build communications infrastructure that holds up under real fire conditions. The difference between a reactive and a pre-planned network is night and day.