 You are about to experience firsthand, up close and personal, an after-action review. You'll see how an after-action review, or AAR, can be a vital learning tool, how it gives all of us and our agencies a solid framework for attaining and disseminating critical organizational knowledge. For years, AARs have benefited private business and the military. Today, the entire interagency wildland fire community has also adopted this proven learning process. As you're about to see, an AAR is a professional discussion of an incident or event that enables firefighters to discover what happened, why it happened, and how strengths can be sustained and weaknesses can be improved upon. Using this simple set of four basic questions, all AARs follow the same format, involve an exchange of ideas and observations, focus on improving proficiency. The AAR is not a critique. Its central focus is to simply discover why things happened, so everyone is better prepared for the next time. The AAR is held immediately after the incident or event by the personnel involved. The incident's leader facilitates this process. The AAR focus is always on what, not who. As you will see by this simulation, the AAR encourages people to speak freely. It provides an open, honest, and professional discussion. It is a dialogue, not a lecture or a debate. It can include respectful disagreement, but never in subordination. If done right, this simple exercise can be a valuable key to an ongoing open communication process that both educates and motivates. AARs will help us all sharpen our wildland fire management skills, knowledge, and capabilities. Alright folks, let's go ahead and get started on the after-action review for the Horse Creek Burn. We had a pretty good day out there. The purpose of this after-action review is to focus on the what, not the who. We want to learn from today's burn and apply as much of that knowledge as possible into the next burn. We all know this was a big deal interagency setup, sat on the shelf for two years. There was a lot of pressure to get this done, and we're going to be doing more of this. We'll probably be doing a lot of these burns in the future. What I'd like to do is capture as much knowledge and learn from our mistakes and learn from our positives today and wrap that up into the burn package. The ground rules are very simple for the after-action review. Let's not make it personal, let's keep it professional. And please don't interrupt each other, let folks say their piece, get their comments out. But do try to keep your comments short so we can get out of here before it gets too much later. And then the final thing is what's said here stays here, and there's a caveat attached to that. What I need to do is to capture as much information in writing so we can put it into the packaging. If Pete, you could take notes for us. And the way we want to take the notes is, I'll give you an example. If we decided that through this after-action review that Leith didn't fill up the drip torches and that led to a delay getting ignition started, we wouldn't say that. We would say make sure drip torches have filled up the night before to avoid delays in the morning. So we don't attach names, it's not about blame. I'm sure as we go through this all of us are going to focus on things we could have done differently. So let's just keep the names out of it and let's make sure we capture the important points. And we'll get it wrapped up. Okay, is everybody good to go? We get started? I'm going to go off the IRPG, the simple four-question format after-action review, page 17. And let's start with the first question. What was the overall objective of the burn? Well, the objective was a fuel reduction burn. We were looking to reduce hopefully 75% of the fuel loading in the area with as minimal damage as we could to the mature trees in the area. Those were our primary objectives. As far as what was planned, as you mentioned, the horse creek burned. We've kind of had it sit on the shelf for a while. A lot of time effort went into the planning, the writing of the burn plan. But busy season, we were kind of slow out of the chute to get things going. Didn't have quite enough talent on the district or qualifications, so brought some of you folks in to help us out. Okay. That was the plan. All right, well good. Let's focus on the planning part. First question, what was the ignition pattern? Chris, you were the ignition specialist out there today. What was your plan for firing the unit? Well, the plan was Curtis to start up in the northeast corner with two ignition teams, one larger than the other, with Curtis or with Travis, excuse me, holding for us to light a test fire. And if that went well, to proceed and tie it down into horse creek and also to take fire south along the ridge. Okay. What was the plan for holding? Travis, you were the holding specialist out there. What would you foresee? That was pretty straightforward. Keep it in the unit, you know, I'm holding this ridge, and this is the hand line, so I focused a lot on that. I wasn't as concerned with the drainage, but, you know, I had a hand crew up there and we had engines with the road and pretty straightforward holding show. Okay. Let's move on to what actually happened. We started burning. I believe it was about nine o'clock. We started ignition. Chris, why don't you fill us in on that? Yeah, Curtis, it was, let me float out. Yeah, about nine o'clock, began ignition with the test fire. Test fire went well. From that point, we got to go from U and fired back to the west along the north perimeter and then began taking fire as well down the south end. Okay, the two engine captains. Scott, what did you think? What did you think of the test fire? This thing's progressed. I thought that the test fire was going well. Chris and Travis and I, we all worked together and we were in agreement that the test fire was in meeting our objectives at the time of the test fire. Cool. Can you make sure you capture that piece in the notes? Sure. Test fire looked good. Lace? Yeah, I agree. It looked really well. I mean, it was doing exactly what we wanted. So, I agree. Okay, so I think we're all in agreement that test fire was good. We got progressing up. Travis, you started firing up the ridge. Mark, how'd things look from down there and you had the local fire department? Well, you know, we came in pretty nervous with the residents all concerned because we're burning in their backyard. So, with the smoke and everything, they were a little concerned, but I was pretty happy with what I saw with the test burn and what was going on. So, from my point of view, it was a good thing. All right, if I remember right about 1,100, things started to change. I always want to move ahead because it seemed like it was pretty much uneventful up to that point. If I correct me if I'm wrong, folks, but I believe the burn pattern looked about like this. Does that look close? Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, so let's take it up to 11 o'clock. We got the firing to this point. Chris, you're running ignitions and you're at this point, what's going on? Well, about 11 o'clock, we got about there. Things were going really well. Winds were in good shape with good fire behavior, but we got into an area that surprised us that the prep hadn't been completed through there. So, the prep wasn't completed. We were still continuing to fire as conditions were still pretty optimal as far as getting the objectives met. And shortly thereafter, we got a little bit of a wind shift and got a spot fire across the line. Okay, let's hold it up there. Now, Travis, you're holding. Yeah. And you're up there with Chris. Chris was saying that he didn't feel that prep was the standard. How do you feel about that? Well, it's hard to say, but I agree with him because I'm the one that did the prep. But what he's right, it wasn't done as well as it had been previous to that, all the area before. Okay. So, yeah, it's true. Okay. We can touch on that a little more in question three. So, everyone's in agreement that the prep probably wasn't done or was not done to standards up on the ridge? Yeah, that was a big part of it. Curtis, the other part is, it was probably my fault as much as anything. I didn't get out and scouted ahead of time. I knew most of the folks. We worked together when it brought the module over of hot shots. Travis was the only one who hadn't worked with us. Okay. We'll address that as we go on. I just want to make sure that everybody's comfortable with that statement that there are some issues with the prep. Now, you were firing pretty aggressively. If I remember right, you covered that distance in a very short time. What were you thinking with that? Well, the conditions were going well and probably got a little bit overzealous and tried to get her done a little faster and we really needed to. The first part was going well. We had covered quite a bit of country and the winds were real favorable, so we continued, thought it may be just a short section of prep and so we decided we'd continue to go for it. Okay. Well, let's bump the timeline up somewhere just after 11, if I remember right. Travis, somebody called in a wind shift. Is that correct? About 11 o'clock? Yeah. Oh, Scott, that was you. You were taking one. I was taking weather and about 11.15 or so, we started getting strong winds out of the west. So we got a wind shift just to visualize here. Wind shift out of the west. We got a more of a west component. And you contacted everyone on the radio? I did, yes. And whereas in communications with ignitions and holding. Okay. So then we got, it's about 11.15 I think is when we had the spot fire, right? And that took place just over the ridge right here. Travis, why don't you fill us in on what happened at that point? It was pretty amazing how quickly it happened. He called in the wind shift and right away we got a spot. And as holding, I contacted Blake and let him know the general area. And right away he knew where it was and he knew the best, quickest way to get there. And he was on top of it and got there. I was trying to get down there with the holding forces, but he pretty much had it wrapped up. Okay. So you took action on the spot. Why don't you go ahead and show us what happened here on the table? All right. Kind of pretty familiar with this area and notice the wind switch. I was kind of ready for it. We came right in here and I had the Forest Service guys right off the bat start starting a little structure protection. I called Mark because he had the bigger engine to come in. And the other engine was actually on the fire when Mark got here. He took over the structure and the other engine helped on the fire. And the spot fire actually went better than I thought. I thought it was going to blow out, but everybody worked well together and we hammered it. And even with the wind that kind of pushed him towards the cabin. But the propane was an issue right off the bat. But everybody did really well and hammered it. And you knocked it down about an acre? Yeah, probably an acre. Now Mark, you brought your structure engine from the fire department. What was going through your head when you pulled that down? Well, with the structure engine, our guys got the proper PPE for the structure. So we bunkered up, got around the house, deployed our hoses, and we secured the propane tank. Our guys are pretty good at, with the hazmat stuff and the propane. So we felt there was no issue with the propane, but we had everything secure while the other two engines did their thing out there in the spot fire. So I thought from our point of view we worked really good, all three engines. I appreciate you guys being there too. It made it a lot easier for us to do our thing knowing you're back there. I also thought the communication between the three engines was really good today. I mean, the focus, the structure was the structure guys took care of the structure and we went out and took care of the wild land. So I thought that communication between the three engines was really good also. Okay, in the interest of time, what I'd like to do is, if everybody's in agreement, can we just kind of go back to the burn, the spot's wrapped up, and then we progress with the firing operation down the ridge and back to the creek. And is everybody okay with moving on to that, on the second question, and we'll come back and address some of these issues on the third question. So Chris, you guys regrouped, and you started going down the ridge? Yeah, once we got the spot under control, we kind of transitioned back into those initial roles of ignition and holding, and we continued to progress down the ridge, had to take the crew, while they were working on the spot fire down below, we couldn't really access it, so we took the hotshot crew and they continued to prep, finished up the prep on down to the end, and then we had the ignition team go ahead and finished down on the ridge, and it went well from there. Okay, let's go ahead, if everybody's cool, we'll call that good, and let's jump into why it happened, and the white part, I'd like to focus on the spot fire. Lath, you had mentioned that, you didn't seem like you were surprised with the spot, and you've worked in this area a lot. Anything you can add to this? Yeah, about every day about that time, it shifts there, and I've been on the district for 15 years, so like I said, it didn't surprise me, I was just hoping I'd be wrong, it wasn't. I sure wish you would have said something, the debriefing, the plan for it. You know, I kind of, I should have, to be honest, a little but hurt that I wasn't involved a little more, with my experience, and so I should have said something. If I'm in your check on further of why this probably happened, it was probably, we mentioned a little bit about the pressure, I think there's a little pressure to get this thing done, and a hurry, we're up against the end of the fiscal year, and like I said earlier, it's been a busy year, fighting fire, even though we had this thing on the shelf ready to go, we didn't spend a whole lot of time from a district's perspective, getting it ready for you guys. We had to ask folks to come in and help. I had Lath off doing other things at the time, we had Travis down to help us prep. Big learning lesson notes I'll put down for ourselves is to treat every burn, even though this was only 100 acres, I think we were pretty relaxed, knowing you folks were here to help. We should have stepped it up a notch and been a little bit more prepared for you, and we certainly could have scouted that line as well. And Mr. Gordon, as a district FMO, you know, in the roll-up, if we can get this type of stuff captured, that'll help us back at home, too, because we're under the same pressure. Absolutely. Okay, I think we've kind of slid into the final question on what we can do next time. There's a good lead-in, Pete, with what it sounds like for the most part, just slowing down, taking our time, getting together, talking about stuff. Lace, I think we kind of caught, kind of wrapped up what we talked about. Get you folks, you guys, that have been around for a while, more involved in the planning. Is there anything that you could have done different on the day of the burn? You know, I should have spoke up, and I should have maybe even came out a little early and drove the line, and I could have said we need to fix that one area. And, you know, I should have spoke up, mainly. And it's just like with Mark, the positive is having you here, and the thing to learn from is to have you more involved. Yeah, sometimes, you know, when there's a lot of overhead, you get a little intimidated, you don't want to say much. And, you know, I felt like maybe you guys wouldn't listen to me, so I didn't talk. Well, I'll tell you, after the day, I'll do whatever you say. All right. Say that, Kevin. And I don't want to wear this topic out, but I just want to make sure that we're in agreement for holding an ignition that we can all, and everybody else, that we need to take a look at our prep, probably have better standards, more involvement. Does that sound good? Yeah. And then, Chris, if we had to do the same burn again over tomorrow, how would you do your ignition pattern? As far as ignition, probably a little bit slower than, you know, one of the keys is getting folks out there and ensuring the prep's done, maybe have a couple of folks to clean it up as we go. But, again, just take it a little bit slower and be a little more mindful of what's happening with the wind and we got into the fuel. Scott, you've been pretty quiet today. Anything you want to add? Just something I was noticing with operations. When we did get the spot fire, I think as something that we could use as a collective group is we could have discussed trigger points a little more profoundly in the briefing that if this does something does happen on the least side of the ridge there that this is what's going to happen. We're going to stop ignition, holding is going to hold. The engines are going to go over there and we'll have that trigger point in place that we can use next time. That's an excellent suggestion. Something else as far as the future, some of the contingency stuff was a little bit unclear in the briefing. And that was me. As burn boss, you know, I've got a 70-page burn plan in my pocket and I think I talked about 15-30 seconds about contingency and fortunately you guys are here. So that's a good one for me to take home. Curtis, I think in the briefing too, you know, the way you're asking each of us, you know, before the, in the briefing you should have done that too maybe, you know, Sidley, how do you feel about this and Mark, how do you, you know, it's kind of you did your briefing and then we went and lit. Okay, so I'll open it up, give a little more time for questions at 20-second pause for questions in the morning. And I know you're in a rush to, you know, find yourself. That was perfect. And that's what I was thinking the whole time was you got to get started. But that's a good point. If we had talked before, I would have known some of these things. Okay, I know, I think we all probably want to get home. It's been a long day. Anything else to wrap it up? You want to thank everybody for helping us meet these targets and coming out and helping meet the calls on the district for me. I appreciate all the help and good work for those of you visiting and my own guys too. Thanks. As we get this AAR, this roll-up will be in the final package. As we all know, this is interagency and it's been a big deal. So I know my boss and I think all of our bosses want to look at this and it'll be in the package for next year. Thanks, guys. Yeah, thank you.