Last year, the Government Accounting Office completed a report at the behest of the United States Department of Agriculture concerning the United States Forest Service. Entitled “Next Steps Are Uncertain for Improving Communications for Wildland Firefighters and Tracking Their Locations,” it laid out the challenges of communications for emergency responders, especially during “wildland” fires
The September 2025 report detailed that “the forest service’s communications capabilities among wildland firefighters are mostly based on voice communications over radio, which limits sharing important safety information.”
The GAO noted efforts by the forest service, but cited its lack of a strategic plan to organize the enhancement of both technology and personnel. It placed blame for part of this problem on 2025 federal personnel cuts that removed personnel experienced in the needed fields and subsequent turnover in those employment roles.
Work to improve those capabilities locally started last week at the Pendleton County General Services Building’s Office of Emergency Management conference room.
Rick Gillespie, Pendleton County Emergency Services coordinator, explained, “This is the beginning stage of developing a full exercise to test interoperable communications.”
The Federal Communications Commission defines “interoperability” as “[a]n essential communications link within public safety and public service wireless communications systems which permits units from two or more different entities to interact with one another and to exchange information according to a prescribed method in order to achieve predictable results.” The concept emerged after both the Sept. 11th attacks and the aftermath of major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, as a key element of planning in homeland security and emergency management.
Officials from local, state, and federal offices joined together. This included Dr. Matthew Blackwood, state emergency management department regional liaison, forest service personnel, and representatives from Randolph, Pendleton, Grant, Tucker, and Preston counties, as well as an expert on amateur radio and its usefulness in emergency response events.
The goal lay in commencing the planning for a Regional Communications Functional Exercise. It will test and analyze the effectiveness of communications among the State of West Virginia, county agencies, and the USFS in different sections of the Monongahela National Forest. A similar operation will take place in the southern counties of the forest.
Though the GAO report focused on communication with and tracking of firefighters during major wildfires, the meeting last week was more broad-based and included not only fire, but search and rescue as well.
While Pendleton County has some of the most active and popular sites in the national forest, such meetings rarely took place here in recent years. Gillespie said, “We didn’t have an appropriate facility to host that.”
Gillespie shared that “this building played a key role in getting it here,” referring to the meeting. He added that Blackwood was “very pleased with the space and complimentary to what we’re doing here.”
He went on to add that the meeting and its goal, which is to organize a functional exercise for next fall, served as an example of how emergency management “is never stagnant” and “is always working on how best to deal with emergencies where they happen.”
