In the event of natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes, storms or wildfires, fire and rescue services must deploy search and rescue operations and disaster recovery very quickly; often over very large geographic areas in difficult terrain. This can pose a real problem in terms of achieving adequate radio coverage.

Wildfires in Europe are more and more frequent especially due to the summer weather impact. The rise in wildfire incidents over the past few years has caused devastation for natural ecosystems and has also had an extensive economic impact on tourism, transport and supply networks. Managing unexpected critical disasters brings challenges to emergency services as they try to manage an often-uncontrollable situation. Tait has the right communications solutions to allow fire services to take back some of that control through mission critical communications.

A TB7304 transportable DMR & Analogue repeater could be deployed by a firefighter to extend the coverage of portable radio users in small to medium fires. For more rampant fires where the terrain and remote areas come with communication blackspots, a TMX450 DMR to LTE Gateway could be deployed to provide wide area coverage between the DMR TP9500 series portables & Tait TWX500 wearable devices to bridge services and ensure coverage. These solutions help mitigate the communication challenges firefighters endure. 

Indoor or Outdoor fires

These are unpredictable emergencies which are a danger to potentially everyone in proximity to the incident as well as those on the frontline trying to control it. Should the TP9500 Series radio users get into any difficulty, both the TWX554 LTE Wearable device and portables have emergency panic buttons that can send a call to other users, identifying their GPS location. This alert will also be displayed on the IRIS Incident Command Application.

Search and Rescue

These operations often cover large areas of remote and harsh landscapes such as mountains. Once again, either vehicle-mounted TB7300 repeaters or TB7304 transportable repeaters provide an easy way to provide mobile communications, so search parties spread out across a wide area can keep in touch and coordinate their search efforts. 

Natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes and hurricanes require disaster recovery personnel to be deployed as quickly as possible. But these events often damage permanent communications networks, so fast deployable mobile networks are required. Repeaters can be used to provide networks for fire and rescue teams deployed to help find, save lives and prevent further damage. 

A remarkable example of Tait solutions integrations and deployment can be found in Andalusia, Spain where the local government - Junta de Andalusia - implemented the Digital Emergency Network in 2022 (the first of its kind in Europe) this network provides a single umbrella system for communications among and between the region’s frontline responders (police, fire fighters and ambulance), other emergency groups such as specialist forest firefighting services, the region’s water management agency and remote organisations such as ski fields which also require emergency support. 

Other relevant cases of Tait DMR solutions in Europe include the West Sussex Fire Rescue Service, located in the south of England and one of the largest fire brigades in the world LFB - London Fire Brigade.

For more information, visit: www.taitcommunications.com