Ca ROSS How it works?

California & Hawaii Hotlist Questions and Discussion
#1

Maybe this info is somewhere on the internet but I can’t find it. I am wondering a little more in-depth info about how ROSS works.

So for OES units I assume that the unit is in the system and shows available then the request comes out and the home Department fills the request.

For Local Government though how does it work? Does say La City have 30 engines available in the system to be requested? Or do they just have a line in the system that says LA City has the ability to send local government and when requested they figure out how many engines? How does this work for little small departments?

Some departments can maybe only send one engine out of town, when that engine is gone is there a spot in ROSS that says XYZ fire dept isn’t available for more? Or once that engine is back from a response does XYZ fire dept have to update there status in ROSS to show they have the ability to send a type 2 engine for a strike team?

Thanks for helping me understand the system better. I know there is more to it, with overhead and private stuff too, but lets take it one step at a time LOL

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#2

You are on the right track , LG resources are ordered on the OES side of ROSS for all incidents unless you are a contract county with CalFire which then applies to wildland fires only. The state of Ca is divided up into regions, each region has a coordinator( for ex; LA County is the region 1 coordinator, in that region you will have OP Areas(operational areas ie; La county, Ventura county, Santa Barbara County etc), within these counties you have multiple LG departments and one agency is declared the OP Area coordinator. All the LG departments within there respective OP areas declare daily what they have available and pass this info on to the op area coordinator ie; 1 T3 and 1T1 1 WT etc, the OP area gathers all this intel from the agencies within there control and submitt to the R-1 Coordinator in the form of Single resource, T-1 and T3 strike teams, WT etc. as orders are placed in ROSS on the OES side it is filtered to the various closest regiions and Op areas untilfilled like a pebble in the pond orders go closest to furthest away until filled. this Is ROSS in a nut shell, there vis a much deeper and complicated side to ROSS which is do deep for this convo from me. Good Luck

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#3

Unless it’s changed in the last few years since I used it, yes every piece of equipment an agency wants to send out is in ROSS. They can be entered “on the fly” if they are not in there, but it is a hassle and will really slow things down.

There is a section where an OA , Local, State and Fed person (requester) can look and see how many of what type are available in what location. Then as mentioned it is up to the Duty Officer of the agency to decide what (and which specific resources) to send. If they are asked for 5 and only fill 3, the other 2 go back to the requester (UTF) to be resent to someplace else. There really isn’t something that says XYZ is not available anymore, more like when a requester is looking for something, then XYZ doesn’t come up in the display.

Usually it is the OA that re-statuses (in ROSS) the resource when it comes back and is available, not the Agency itself. This is in regard to the mechanics of ROSS, not the in the decision as to whether the resource is physically available or not. Some of the larger agencies do their own status updates as it can be more efficient. That is more of a training issue in regards to keeping up to date on using the program.

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#4

And this process, as we send out more equipment and overhead resources, becomes more extensive. Requests go to different areas, and as they get UTF’ed (unable to fill) they are returned to the requestor to be shipped out to another area in an attempt to fill the need(s). This can go on for days, depending on the type of request and the current draw-down in a particular area. The entire process so far this season has seemed to move along quicker than in the past… it’s still early!

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#5

Also what has sped up the ordering process is many of the Regional Dispatch centers are going to live time data feeds where each of the op areas within their regions are providing availability of resources. This has expedited their abilities to fill or UTF orders where the ol’ days they would shop which ultimately bogs down the system.

#6

For local government and OES owned resources ROSS doesn’t act like a dispatch system. It is a following system and registry for equipment and personnel. As described in other posts on this thread, mutual aid requests move from Operational Area to Operational Area. Exiample, Sacramento City has a large incident requiring out of county assistance. The Operational Area Coordinator would contact the adjacent Operational Area Coirdinator and request resources. This can be done for up to 5 initial attack strike teams before pushing the requests up the system to the Region Coordinator (much of this process may occur dispatch center to dispatch center). ROSS comes in after the fact when the agencies or their communication centers enter into ROSS the units and personnel on the assignment. In many areas of California, requests come into the Commuications Center via ROSS - Strike Team Type lll needed - and then a ton of phone calls are made to determine what agencies can respond equipment and personnel, it is not automated. Again, if the center can fill the request they would accept it and later enter the equipment and personnel. Point is that ROSS itself cannot see the immediate status of local government and OES owned equipment. We just haven’t arrived there yet.

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#7

How does North and South Ops come into play?

#8

In regards to what? That is a very broad question, even in regards to the topic being discussed. What I got from the OP was how the mechanics of the program work, not necessarily the how the ordering flow/process theory occurs.

#9

North ops coordinates incident resources for North California and South ops for the south. They communicate between each other as well.

#10

Define communication!

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#11

Rhetorical !!?? :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes::+1:

#12

There’s a direct line, it goes from one can to another

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#13

There is no direct line between the 2 GACC’s. It is a speed dial if you are referring to telephone. But there is a microwave line on the modUcom radios that can be used for the IA use of resources. Each CA GACC has their 2 CAFIRE regions, plus a North, South, and Sac ECC only Microwave line to talk. But if it’s not a IA fire, then 'deals" for resources are made by the GACC agency Duty Officers via the phone. You need to remember ROSS is just a electronic program to track those resources requested. We simply went from cards to a computer program to request resources. What is statused in ROSS is only as good as what somebody went and updated. Sometimes the information is correct and sometimes it’s not. It is not a CAD. But most requests, after the initial IA, are put into ROSS and followed up with a phone call to the GACC to confirm they got the request and answer any questions they may have about the order.

An example of sharing and statused resources. South Ops breaks a fire in BEU. And if Wincan shows the closet helicopter is C-106 out if Alma, South Ops will come up on the South/North/Sac radio and as if C-106 is available. If North Ops says yes, to then South Ops places that request to North Ops who will then place it to the correct unit to fill that request. The same goes for LV/OES. CAL OES has duty Officers that manage those resources. If a fire needs some LG or OES resources, then once that Op area and or Region is tapped out, then a phone call will be placed to the CAL OES Duty Officer for directions on where to place those requests. That Duty Officer will then start making phone calls to the next closest OES Region to see if they can fill it. So the telephone is still the main player in resource ordering. A human being goes into ROSS and just fills in blanks.

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#14

What’s crazy about this system is the last week as been plagued with ROSS outages. Some of these outages have lasted in excess of 12 hours. Yesterday it lasted all day and evidently wasn’t back up until after 1am this morning. We have orders on the Holy fire that have not been processed yet because of these outages. You would think a nationwide system would have more redundancies to assist with these outages so the orders don’t get held up. Granted, this is more or less a tracking system, but could you imagine if dispatch centers went down and they said, oh well, guess we cant dispatch any engines because the system is down.

The problem we see is most agencies may know an order is coming, but will not let their resources out unless they have that resource order and O number in hand. So these outages become a real issue when you are counting on resources coming but they are held up because the system is down.

#15

Sounds like many centers were going back to the old fashioned way of pen, ICS Forms and fax machines to process orders to get them out and then catch up later in ROSS when it comes back up. At least there is some back up process to get stuff out.

#16

Orders should not have stopped. Everybody went back to cards immediately, do orders still should have been processed. Contingency has aways been cards if ROSS went down.

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#17

I’m sure it slowed the process down if that’s what they did. One of the orders just made it to its destination and it added an extra 24 hrs to the process it partially because it was a NR and for some reason was shopped to a few op areas before they realized it was a NR.

#18

NR? What is that?

#19

Named Request

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