Personnel file

NATHAN TRAUERNICHT
Assistant fire chief, UC Davis-city of Davis fire departments

Education: Bachelor of Science degree in fire protection and safety engineering, Oklahoma State University, 2002; Master's of Public Administration, DeVry University's Keller Graduate School of Management, 2006; and Executive Leadership and Management Institute, Western Association of College and University Business Officers. He is a member of the Institution of Fire Engineers and holds the chief fire officer designation from the Center for Public Safety Excellence.

UC Davis career: Joined the campus Fire Department in 2008 as assistant chief of operations and training, and became interim chief in April 2010 upon Joe Perry’s retirement. In September, when the campus began its pilot consolidation with the city Fire Department, Trauernicht became assistant chief in charge of administration.

Previous experience: He started in the fire service in his teens, as an Explorer in his hometown of Lincoln, Neb. He worked with volunteer fire departments while in college in Oklahoma, and has since worked with career departments, and combination volunteer and career departments in Florida, Nevada, Washington and California. He was interim fire chief in Oroville before coming to UC Davis.

In more than 15 years in the fire service, Nathan Trauernicht has never been on a call like this one. He has been summoned to 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. — to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House — to meet Vice President Biden.

This is not a fire call. But to fire officers like Trauernicht, assistant chief on the consolidated management team that runs the UC Davis and city of Davis fire departments, the Biden meeting — scheduled for April 7 — is almost as important.

Trauernicht will join his colleagues in the International Association of Fire Chiefs in thanking Biden and the Obama administration for their support of a proposal to dedicate 20 megahertz of the 700 MHz spectrum to public safety communications.

Today, most fire and police agencies across the country rely on cellular bandwidth or radio-based systems for communication, Trauernicht said. The Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center highlighted the shortcomings of the latter.

The cellular system is problematic, too, for example, when firefighters and police officers find themselves in places with poor cellular service. It not only limits voice communication, but data transfer as well, to and from mobile computers in firetrucks and police cars.

“With cellular, I am competing for bandwidth with the teen-ager in the car next to me, who is downloading music,” Trauernicht said. “Or someone in a nearby building who is watching a YouTube video on his cellphone.”

Trauernicht said dependable, high-speed bandwidth is critical for the fire service. Say, for example, his crew responds to a fire in a campus building, and the firefighters need to download a floor plan from a campus server.

“We can hope it comes through on cellular, or we can have a dependable, high-speed broadband connection,” he said. “Our firefighters need this and the people in the building need this, so we have the best potential for a safe outcome for everyone involved.”

Trauernicht said he also envisions video streaming via broadband, from cameras mounted in firetrucks. “Say a truck is approaching a fire on campus or a crash on Interstate 80,” he said. “The video will show up in other trucks that are also responding, and the firefighters in those trucks can see what the situation looks like, and call for more or less help if necessary.”

Public safety officials also tout these possibilities: live video to provide instantaneous “situational awareness” for mass casualty incidents and major hazardous materials spills; and, for emergency medical services, digital imaging, portable electrocardiograms and ultrasounds, and blood analysis.

Securing the ‘D Block’

The federal government has already allocated 10 megahertz in the 700 MHz band to public safety, in what is dubbed the “PS Block,” but public safety officials are hoping to double that – by securing the “D Block” within the same band.

However, the Federal Communications Commission is preparing for an auction early next year to make the D Block available for commercial use — unless Congress votes otherwise. President Obama supports turning over the D Block to public safety, and legislation to that effect is now moving through the Senate (S.28) and the House of Representatives (H.R. 607).

“Only with this particular spectrum configuration (the PS and D blocks), and none other, can public safety be assured that it will have the ability to build the network it needs now and into the future,” Chief Al Gillespie said Feb. 16 in testimony to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Gillespie, chief of the North Las Vegas Fire Department and first vice president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, described “a national architecture for public safety wireless communications,” interoperable among agencies, with local control.

“We cannot have commercial providers deciding what is or is not an emergency and what is a priority,” Gillespie testified. “Public safety transmissions have to go through without delay. A ‘no service’ signal is not an acceptable element of emergency operations. The lives of firefighters, the lives of medics, the lives of law enforcement officers depend on this. It is our responsibility.”

Trauernicht is equally passionate, advocating for the fire service as president of the Operations Section of the California Fire Chiefs Association and as the Northern Division director on the association’s executive board.

He also serves on the association’s legislative task force. But while he visits Sacramento often, he has never had the opportunity – until now — to be an advocate in Washington, D.C.

The fire officers’ meeting with Biden is scheduled amid a series of seminars put on by the Congressional Fire Services Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to educate members of Congress about the needs and challenges of U.S. fire and emergency services.

“We want to thank Vice President Biden for his support, and discuss the importance of this project and where it is going,” Trauernicht said.

Right now, it is still a proposal — part of Obama’s Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative. It includes $10.7 billion for the development and deployment of a nationwide wireless broadband network “to afford public safety agencies with far greater levels of effectiveness and interoperability,” according to a White House fact sheet.

The fact sheet also notes: “An important element of this plan is the reallocation of the D Block for public safety.”

Trauernicht said: “This will benefit firefighters for decades to come, and not just firefighters, but the communities that they serve.”

More about broadband for public safety

The nation's leading public safety associations, including the International Association of Fire Chiefs, are partners in the Public Safety Alliance, which describes its mission as working to ensure that law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services agencies have "the most technologically advanced communications capability that meets the difficult, life-threatening challenges they face everyday as they protect America."