 The forest firefighter service makes it possible for workers to produce without interruption. Of course, there are tricks to every trade, and the ranger explains just what they are. A safe way to handle tools. A proper way to put on this backpack pump. Hard to figure at first, but not when you know how. Next time, if you're alone, mister, set it on a boulder or a stump before slipping your arms into the harness. And you, mister, be sure that rakehead is on tight. Carry it with those sharp teeth pointing down, like that. These fire rakes are very useful. Besides raking, they can be used for cutting brush or cutting out roots. Watch this. With this tool, you can cut through nearly everything, right down to the mineral soil. All right, son, you try it. All of you men. And as soon as you get the hang of it, we'll move back into the woods and practice making what's known as a fire line. Clearing everything inflammable from the strip of the forest floor so that a fire burning on the surface can't move across it, because the flames will have nothing to feed on. No, sir, don't use that pump for the full stream. You waste water that way. If you slip your finger over the nozzle, you'll get a spray instead of a stream and put out that much more fire. The outworks? You know, there's the makings of a darn good forest firefighting crew here. That's a few things that have to be learned, let's all. Hello, and welcome to this year's Fire Line Safety Refresher Training. Looking at that clip from the past, it can be said that modern-day wildland firefighting has dramatically changed over the years. It can also be argued that in reality, many of the basic fundamentals have not changed at all. During this presentation, we're going to explore, through history, the development of our guiding principles and safety checklists. It's our hope that once again, fire line safety will be brought to the forefront of your mind, and you'll be persistent in following proper safety procedures throughout this upcoming fire season. We'll also ask you to look at some real-life fire scenarios and work through some group exercises. Your active participation is the key to making this training successful. So try your best to be a positive contributor to your group's effort. To get you started, let's get our heads back in the fire game by going to Southern California and visiting one of the many fires they had to deal with this last year. Just before 1700 on August 23rd, 2003, the Los Angeles County Fire Department Camp 9 Hellishot crew was dispatched to the Los Alamos fire located 60 miles north of Los Angeles in the Angeles National Forest near Interstate 5 from Pyramid Lake. While in route, the incident commander instructed them to report to the west flank of the fire to help protect the Los Alamos campground. Weather for the day called for temperatures in the high 80s to 90 degrees, minimum relative humidities of 8 to 15 percent, and winds out of the southwest of 5 to 15 miles per hour. You are part of a massive initial attack dispatch with units from the Angeles National Forest, Los Padres National Forest, and the LA County Fire Department. Except for the first in engines in the Hellishot crew, all units have extended response times of 30 minutes or greater. The command structure is still being established at this time. Now let's go back to California and see how the Camp 9 Hellishots went about their business. Engine 777, what is your location? I'm here on this road past the pump out. We just had to tuck around before it gets in the mount. It was the smallest part of the fire. I think we got a few of those. We got this. It's the one that went out real good right here. Engine 777, what is your location? I'm here on this road past the pump out. We just had to tuck around before it gets in the mount. It was the smallest part of the fire. If we can break through from here, we can stop it. It's grass. We got a road there. We can light this. We can probably save the vehicle. Let's see if that vehicle is open. Hey, what are your ideas, man? If you see something, let me know. Got it. Take the zone and escape route back into the park. Got it. We're going to head for the asphalt. We'll head back up to where the truck is right there. We'll head in that direction. Got it. Helping no containment at this time. Certainly camped your ground. 1, 7, 3, 7 points. Tuck him. And how many? Probably 15 to 20 at this time. Close. Light close. 149. Is that where you was refreshing? 10-4, follow up. Light close. Let's back off. Quick, let's go. 10-4, follow up. Want to grab my tool? Thank you. It's probably going to be too late. Hang on. It's probably too late. It's going. Might work. Might work. Lost the spots, guys. Lost the spots. Lost it away from cobwebs and got you thinking about fire again. The late Paul Gleason, a retired hot-shot superintendent, often said that firefighters are required to make quick decisions given limited information in an ever-changing dynamic environment. That statement rang true many times this last fire season. Nationally, over 63,000 fires were reported in 2003, which burned about 3.9 million acres. This is well below our 5- and 10-year average. However, the most important statistic, the number of fatalities, proved once again to be well above average. Of the 30 fatalities we suffered last year, 12 were the result of vehicle accidents, 7 from aviation operations, 7 more were the direct result of physical fitness levels, and 4 from burnovers. We can't bring back the lives that were lost last year, but we can and should do everything in our power to learn from them and keep ourselves out of next year's statistics. Our fire history, specifically fatality fires and the lessons learned from the loss of fellow firefighters, has given us the historical foundation on which our guiding principles and safety procedures were developed. These guidelines always come with an expectation that if followed, we will eliminate similar tragedies in the future. Unfortunately, the numbers tell a sad story in regards to our fight against fire. Let's take a short walk through our fire history. Keep in mind that we're not going to recap every fire event that we've experienced to date, but we will try to see how significant wildland fires played a key role in the development of our safety guidelines and reference material. Please don't be offended if we skip over events that may have personal relevance to you, but do feel free to share those experiences during your group exercises. Wildland fires have always played an ecological role in ecosystem management. But in 1910, wildland fires burned relentlessly across Idaho and Montana and took the lives of 78 people. This led to the first federal policy and funding mechanism regarding wildland fire management. In 1933, the Tillamook Fire in Oregon burned 311,000 acres of prime timber, and the Griffith Park Fire in California killed 25 firefighters in a burnover. The total number of fatalities that year was 29. The Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, started in early 1933 and was quickly used to help out in firefighting efforts. In 1936, a fire in Chatsworth, New Jersey burned over five more firefighters. In 1937, the Blackwater Fire in Wyoming killed 15 firefighters, and in 1939, five CCC firefighters were overrun by a brush fire just north of Winamooka, Nevada. Lessons learned from this Rock Creek fire led to improved wildland fire training. This may have been the start of what we are doing now, the annual refresher training. In 1947, 220,000 acres burned in the state of Maine, killing numerous civilians, and in 1949, Congress passed the first forest fire compact, uniting all the New England states on one of the first mutual aid agreements. Also in 1949, the Man Gulch Fire in Montana took the lives of 13 smoke jumpers. This tragedy led to the opening of the Fire Science Laboratory in Missoula, which was tasked with studying fire behavior in the hopes of preventing any future accidents of this type and magnitude. Unfortunately, only four years later, the Rattlesnake Fire killed 15 more firefighters, and in 1956, 12 more died in the Innaha Fire. At the end of 1956, a task force was set up to study why these tragedies occurred and recommend a way to put an end to these needless deaths. Bud Moore was one of the members of that board. Well, let me start a little bit by just giving you why the 10th standard orders were put together. At that time, there were quite a series of fires where people burned up just like they did in the loop fires here that we've talked about. And the chief of the Forest Service then decided that we had to convene the task force for the purpose of determining how come this is happening to us so often and to study through all this and then come up with recommendations that might make it more safe on the fire line for our crew. That was where it started. And he assembled the task force. So then we went to work there, and it seemed to me we worked about two weeks on this or so. What we did, we studied way back in history and studied the tragedy fires that had occurred in the past. And we brought that clear up to Mangouts. Mangouts was about the most recent one that was in the same land. We studied all those. And what we looked for in that was common denominators. What seemed to be consistent. We tried to pull that out. And that's what led us to the 10th standard orders in that. But there's an interesting story about how we got the 10th standard orders. Larry Mays was the man that taught this up. He said, we ought to have something like the military had. Just a little cardinal. The military had what I think they called him general lord. Boy, you got to internalize those. Had they worked, I guess is what I want to ask you. And if we were to do it again or better, how could we improve getting the message across the way you guys intended for us to get it? Well, that's a tough one. I like to think that they've worked, but there's not any real way to measure the successes. To know, you have to be out there to know the success stories. Or if we didn't have this, then there's no doubt a lot of goodies come of these things. Because I see them and the people know them. They talk about them. The troops talk about them. And so there's some good there. A lot of good there. The only worry that, one that worries me a little bit now, you have the one that says, fight fires aggressively, but do it safely. That was my treat all my life. I used to bother the safety officers a little bit. I tell the troops, look, safety first? Well, really, what's first is we're going to do this job. We're going to get this fire or whatever it is, not fire, we're going to do the cruising job, whatever we're doing. But we're going to do it with safety. But I put those together, and I think maybe I had a little influence on that particular statement. Fight them aggressively, but make it safe. The 10 standard orders have been the backbone of our safety guidelines. It was and still is believed that if we follow these orders religiously, we would effectively stay out of harm's way. We still use these orders as a tool for burn over and entrapment investigations as a way of understanding what went wrong. Please get into your groups and spend a few minutes looking at the originally suggested standard orders or fire scalds, and compare them to what we use today. Shortly after the 10 standard orders were initiated, the original 13 watch out situations were introduced. Given these new tools and the fact that zero fatalities were reported in 1957, fire managers began to believe that we may have seen the last of these horrific tragedies. But these hopes were shattered over the next two years when California reported 18 of the 19 total fatalities in 1958 and 59. It was at this time that the U.S. Forest Service started to develop the fire shelter and fire resistant clothing. Let's stop at this point and look closely at another influential fire that occurred in California in the mid-1960s. If you're a student of fire and you know your history, you can easily guess which fire this is. It involves downhill line construction. On November 1st, 1966, a fire was reported in a canyon near the boundary of the Angeles National Forest just outside the city of San Fernando. Fire danger had been above normal for most of the fire season, and at least six strong periods of Santa Ana winds had occurred during the last month. The general weather forecast for the day included a high temperature of 90 degrees and relative humidity is as low as 12%. Prevailing winds were out of the northeast at 10 to 15 miles per hour. The first resources arrived on scene at 0600 and quickly set the fire suppression objectives. They determined that the west side of the fire was approaching an area burned in 1962, and the south side would be taken care of by the LA County and city fire departments when the fire reached the bottom of the slope. All federal resources were to be expended on the north and east sides of the fire, and the north end was to be held on the Santa Clara fuel break, which was identified in a pre-attack plan. At 0830, a special weather forecast was issued, which called for Santa Ana conditions with winds from the northeast to east at 30 miles per hour with gusts up to 50, maximum temperatures at 95 degrees, and a minimum relative humidity of 10%. The fuel type consisted of chemise, sage, and sumac. The moisture of live chemise was only 60%, which is the minimum possible for this species. The Del Rosa, Dalton, and Chileo hotshots, along with two counting crews, were building fire line downhill along the east flank. The El Cariso hotshots arrived at 1430, and the superintendent, Gordon King, was told by the line boss to leapfrog the Del Rosa crew and cold trail the fire edge if possible. Mention was made for the steep terrain beyond the point where the Del Rosa crew was working. They were told that the main ridge could be used as an alternative if it was impossible to follow the burned edge. There was no radio available for Superintendent King. The crew worked past the Del Rosa hotshots and continued cold trailing the fire edge to a point where the fire edge dropped into a steep chimney canyon. At this point, King had to make a decision. Please get into your groups and discuss alternative courses of action. Welcome back. Let's walk through what actually happened and take you to the next pivotal decision point for the El Cariso hotshots. King led the first units of his crew carefully down and across the steep, rocky face along the fire's edge. The division boss, unable to contact King directly because King had no radio, made his way down to point A on the main ridge. Since he could not see King at the time, he radioed a liaison officer for the county who was positioned on the road below the fire. The division boss was told that King and his crew were cold trailing the edge of the fire and they would be able to construct line down the rocky chute in the chimney canyon. The division boss waited until the remaining members of the El Cariso crew cleared the rocky face and instructed the Del Rosa hotshots to wait at point A until he checked to see if this was the best way down. He would call them on the radio and advise them to either come down the chute and leapfrog the El Cariso crew or go down the ridge and come in from below. The division boss then proceeded down the rock face. When he was about halfway down, he could see down the chimney most of the way. Most of King's men had crossed the rock slide at the head of the chute and worked their way down to a small bench that paralleled the chute. The fire had backed down the bench and gone out. It was not a clean burn. King and his men were at a place later known as the diamond with the rest of the crew strung out up the chute cold trailing. At the time, a helitanker was working in the lower part of the deep canyon to the west. The fire situation at approximately 1530 was as follows. From the diamond, the burned edge dipped into and across the deep canyon to the west and then down to where the county crews and dozer was working. King could see that the terrain was too steep to cold trail from the chimney canyon into the deep canyon to the west and the bottom of this gully was obviously a difficult and dangerous place to hold the fire. Now let's get back into our groups and complete the second part of this exercise. Welcome back. We recently had a chance to talk to Gordon King and he shared with us his recollection of that tragic day. It was steep and I knew it was steep. Yeah, when you picked up that last pitch, I mean it's a good drop. That's when I told Raymond Chee that was with my head hooked and he was, you know, right now, I said, Chee, wait a minute, do you stay right here? And I'm going to go take a look at this slide area. And when I got over to it and walked down to look at it, the fire was stopped on the other side of the slide area. But up above, it had burned up right up to the very crown of this slide area and burned all the brush out. That had been put out, there was no fire up there at all. But I could see rocks coming down. And they weren't coming down all the time. One or two would come down, someone would kick loose, grab me, pull it down like that. And I pulled Ray down and I said, you know, we're going to have to cross this thing to get over to the other side right over there because that's where we're going to have to start and pick it up along that ridge line. It looks like we go right on down that ridge line and go to the bottom. And I said, okay, I said, I'm going to go across. You stay right here and I'm going to go across. If you see anything coming, you let me know. So I had my shovel up and I started across. Nothing came down. We had worked our way down and I had just gone through a pretty good size stand of chemise and it was kind of in a V-shape. It dropped off on the other side and it almost dropped off the way that when I went through I was holding on and I saw it and I bent the shovel where it kept through and I rolled back to raise it. Watch the drop on the other side of that. We'll cut that thing out of there so everybody can see that it was about a five or six foot drop. And he cut through it left a little bit because that's the way we used to do things. One guy didn't cut the whole thing down. He cut a little bit and moved on. Pretty soon he'd get the fourth or fifth hook. It's all gone. And Ray came through. I yelled at him and said, I'm going further on down, Ray. And he said, okay. And I went on down and I was in a sort of a draw. Just a tiny little thing. I could look up. I could see the county guy still down below me and I could look back. I could see Ray up behind me there. And I heard a helicopter. I didn't see it. Never did see it. But I heard it. I couldn't see it. I couldn't see it. And then I heard the noise. Later on I assumed it had passed below me in that draw. I didn't see it because it was below me. And that's when I heard somebody say something down below there about he missed or he didn't do it right or something like that. I can't really remember what, but they were yelling. Then the copter. I saw the copter after that. It was heading on out the valley. It was climbing up and going around. It didn't dawn on me what he did at that time. He was not on the fire line. He was inside the fire going down. I didn't pay much attention to it. About three or four minutes later I saw a smoke. And I looked down and it was still like over there. We were here. It was like over there. I heard something that I've heard before. It's always put a little fear in me. It's fire going through brush. When you hear it once, you'll always remember it. And I heard it. And I thought, now that's not right. There shouldn't be any fire over here. Something like that. Then I heard the guys across the way yelling. They were yelling at one another. They were yelling at me. They were yelling at one another about something. I wouldn't pay them a whole heck of a lot of attention about it because I was more interested about what I was hearing. I turned around and looked at Ray. Ray was just above me. All of a sudden he was hired. All of a sudden he yelled at Gordon. Get out of there. I turned around to look at him. Again, I said, oh man, there's something going on here. He'd already called Reverse Tuner. It wasn't just my job to do that. If anybody could do that. They were on their way out when I could hear this coming. No fire. I could just hear this coming. And the first thing I remember was I had dark glasses on. Sun glasses. They went poof and fell off my face. Then I knew what was happening. It was not right. I didn't dawn on me the time when it was. I couldn't feel anything. Why'd your glasses come off? Hot air. I could hear this hot air coming in. This noise coming through the brush. And I could see more smoke down below. And I thought, no, that's it. It's amazing what you think. But that's exactly what I thought. That's it. And the next thing I remember, I was in the brush patch. I had my hands above my head. My sleeve rolled up. And all the skin was just hanging off my hands and arms. And I was in the brush patch. And I couldn't figure out how I got there. You just don't know how things happen. Your brain just shuts down and you just do things. But I was there and I remembered that there was a truck down below me. A pickup truck. And there was a guy going like this at me. And I couldn't hear him. But I could see him. When I got down below things, I could start hearing things again. At that time, all I could hear was a roar in my ear. And I was thinking to myself, all this time, it's quiet. But I remember there was a roaring going on in my ear. And then I began to hear a helicopter. And I began to hear people yelling and things like that. And I turned around and looked up where they were. There was a helicopter up there, two of them up there actually. One of them was just lifting off. I stood there for a while watching that. And I was thinking to myself, damn, what did I do wrong? What the hell happened? We were looking for fire. You were looking for hot air. You were looking for fire. That wasn't the first time I've ever felt hot air. But that was the first time I was ever in the position to feel it like that. But I don't know how to describe it. I hope nobody ever gets into that position again to have to describe how it sound or how it felt. Never take anything for granted. The most seemingly innocent event could be tragically deadly. You have more control over a firestorm than you do thinking that you're in the clear and not preparing yourself for it. That's basically what I think. I wasn't prepared for what happened because I wasn't in that mode. I was thinking cold trail down the bomb hill, no big deal. Just work our way down slowly. Don't get hit by the rocks. And we'll be out of here in a couple hours. Chief Edward P. Clough said in his letter requesting an analysis of the loop fire, you must follow every possible lead to determine how we can tighten up our safeguards to prevent a similar disaster in the future. We cannot return the ten men to their friends and loved ones, but we can do everything in our power to see that similar suffering is never again caused by similar conditions. Human life is never to be knowingly or carelessly subordinated to other values. For your information, you just completed a part of a training exercise that was developed right after the loop fire, again in the hopes of preventing such an accident from ever happening again. The lessons learned from this fire are just as valid today as they were in 1967. The downhill indirect line construction guidelines were also developed right after this fire. Now you've all heard, there's nothing out there worth a human life. But again, despite our hopes of never seeing this sort of tragedy again, 1967 and 1968 saw the loss of 31 more lives. The 1968 Canyon fire and the 1971 Romero fire led to the first radio cache standards and the initiation of the red card qualification system. Since communication seems to play a part in about all of our tragic accidents, let's visit with the National Interagency Incident Communications Division for an update. From my understanding the history behind the radio cache, in the early 70s there was a need or some folks came up with the idea that we need a standard cache, a national standard cache. So the BLM and the Forest Service basically developed their cache. This was when the creation of the radio cache was about early 70s. And all we had available was two channel radios. So it was limited. And then as things, as technology evolved, we went from the two channel to the four channel to the eight channel radios. And with the two caches, the BLM and the Forest Service caches. In the late 70s the technology grew enough where the radios were capable of doing multiple channels and synthesized memory in there. And we were able to put multiple channels, multiple frequencies in the channel so we were able to put both the BLM and Forest Service frequencies into one radio. This helped out and by 1987 we combined both the BLM and the Forest Service cache to what we know today as the national cache, radio cache. What the technology is driving for us and as we see things move forward, we're going into many different technologies, the narrow banding of radios. The Project 25 and digital process that we're looking at and we'll be carrying on as technology drives us, we'll be changing into all these different types of radios. With the narrow banding it's increasing the amount of frequencies that are available in that particular spectrum or in that space. And that's what the narrow band does, but it doesn't mean that we're going to be changing frequencies. It just means that the type of how the radios communicate, how they talk out is going to be a little bit different, but it's going to be transparent to the user. And as we go through this transition, the narrow banding issue shouldn't be that big of an issue to the user. There are some things that technical people need to be aware of, but other than that the user should still function without any problems. It doesn't matter what type of radio have, there are standards that are met as far as the frequency band that those radios are capable of using. All the radios that we will have in the cache, no matter what vendor we buy those radios from, they are all capable of talking to each other. The frequencies are all going to be the same in those radios or have that capability. As far as finding out information about some of the new types of radios that we will be bringing into the cache and that the agencies are buying at this time and we'll buy in the future, we've developed a website and on that website we are putting information on some general radio terminology, some general use of the radios. We've got specific information for each type of radio that we will have available in our cache to talk a little bit about what the buttons do, how they're used. We'll also have information on there on how to program those radios. All the radios that we will be bringing into the cache are field programmable. That's the type of radios. That's one of the standards that we will adhere to is the field programmability, so you can program them up in the field. And that website is www.niFC.gov.radio. Between 1972 and 75, 36 more lives were lost. In 1973, Carl C. Wilson published a pamphlet entitled Some Common Denominators of Fire Behavior on Tragedy and Near Missed Forest Fires, Another Reminder of Lessons Learned. In 1976, the Battlement Creek Fire resulted in three fatalities, and in 1977, 14 fatalities resulted from six different burn-over incidents, including the Bass River Fire in New Jersey that killed five firefighters. Later that year, the U.S. Forest Service made it mandatory for all Forest Service employees to carry fire shelters. 1979 saw 13 fatalities, including four on the Spanish Ranch Fire in California and one on the Ship Island Fire in Idaho. Take a closer look at the Ship Island Fire and test your understanding of fire behavior. See if you can predict what this fire is going to do. This fire was similar in topography and only eight miles away from the tragic Kramer incident that killed two Hell Attack crew members in 2003. We'll talk more about that later. On July 17, 1979, the Ship Island Fire started in Idaho's Salmon River area. On July 25, the fire was burning in Parrot Creek, and you were looking east. Watch the time-lapsed footage of this day's fire activity. On July 26, the next day, the management objective was to contain the northward spread within the Tumble Creek drainage. The fire could spread eastward into the rocks and southward slightly, although the fire did not appear to want to go that way. There was no room for the fire to move across the river to the west at all. Three interregional crews were flown into the upper Hellaspot located on the north side of Tumble Creek on an open grassy bench. They were tasked with building a secondary line along the ridge from the drainage bottom east to the bare rocks. If the fire crossed Tumble Creek, this line would be fired out. Two crews were flown into a lower Hellaspot within Tumble Creek drainage. These crews were tasked with using hose lines to impede the progress of the backing fire in the hopes of either containing the fire on the west side of Tumble Creek or at least slowing the fire's progress long enough for the upper crews to complete their line and fire out the ridge to the north. Various overhead were also on scene with the crews working in the drainage bottom. The weather forecast for July 26th reported little change from the previous day with a maximum temperature of 92 degrees and a minimum relative humidity of 10%. South to southwest winds, about 18 miles per hour with gusts up to 25. Let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook. Now let's go back to 1979 and see how this fire actually progressed. After the inversion lifted, operations were proceeding as planned. At approximately 1430, the fire spotted onto the north side of Tumble Creek and quickly ran up the slope to the north and east. The crew members, after an aggressive attempt at suppressing the spot fire, retreated downhill to a bare rock slide toward the river. Two overhead personnel went to the lower hell spot which was considered a safety zone to secure the gear that had been flown in with the crews. The fire spread very rapidly overtaking the hell spot and continued to consume the entire drainage. You can see the crews above on the ridge quickly burn out around the upper hell spot and remain there unharmed while the fire raced around them. The two men on the hell spot piled the gear and used it as a barrier from the flames. They then deployed their fire shelters. The gear however caught fire and generated intense heat which caused one of the men to carefully shift his shelter location three times during the burn over away from the most intense heat. He was wearing gloves. It is believed that the other man not wearing gloves had trouble holding onto his shelter. He did move his shelter one time leaving behind his hard hat and radios. It is believed this occurred near the time of his death. It was after the Ship Island fire that wearing gloves inside a fire shelter became a standard procedure during fire shelter deployment training. Now despite the lessons we learned on the Ship Island fire in 1983 nine more burn over incidents occurred killing one firefighter apiece and these occurred in eight different states. Now I'm not sure which is more troubling having one major burn over incident which takes the lives of nine people or to have nine separate burn over incidents in one year each taking one life. Both are disturbing when you consider the lessons we have learned at this point in our history. In 1984 another 19 fatalities added to the count and in the aftermath of the Siege of 87 which accounted for 23 more lives the fire community released another tool for firefighters to use in the wildland urban interface a spin off from the 13 watch out situations which at about the same period turned into the 18 watch out situations the wildland urban watch out focused primarily on wildland fire operations once they approach an urban development. In 1990 the dude fire fatalities enticed a hot shot superintendent Paul Gleason to once again look at old investigation reports and try to make sense of these tragic accidents. He concluded that a few common words continued to come up in several different accident investigations they were lookouts communications escape routes and safety zones. Armed with this information Paul gave to the fire community what is now known as LCES. After doing some heavy firefighting in Idaho with the crew I was getting even more so concerned about their safety. It's never taken me too much to be interested in being aggressive I like getting in and mixing with it but I started to really worry if I had all the bases covered and I'd memorize the fire orders and everything else but it seemed to me that I needed a little bit simpler for me to be with my crew to make sure the bases were covered. What I did to take a look at everything again is to get the fatality reports I could get my hands on starting with a in a hot fire and just reread those reports try to put myself in a situation and I took a pen and started circling keywords that came up in those reports and reflect them back on an active fire year trying to see what made sense and as it turned out I did this over a course of a Saturday one weekend as it turned out lookouts, communications, escape routes and safety zones are the words that kept on appearing time and time again you know the intent is as you go into a fire environment you've got an objective hazard at minimum you need a lookout to see that objective hazard communication from that lookout to each and every firefighter through radio and word of mouth and then from those positions they escape route to a safety zone over the next three years 34 more lives were lost and in 1994 the fire community witnessed the tragic loss of 35 more 1994 was the worst fire season in terms of fatalities since 1910 oddly the 30 fatalities just last year was the third worst season but in 1994 14 of the 35 fatalities involved type 1 firefighters on the South Canyon fire in Colorado in the wake of this tragedy the BLM introduced the red book or standards for fire and aviation operations the red book was designed to ensure safe wildland fire fuels and fire aviation operations by providing a reference for current policies procedures and safety standards fire program preparedness reviews are now conducted annually and this book provides the standards on which these reviews are based safety grams, safe net and six minutes for safety and four more tools that appeared after this fire in 1995 two significant fires brought to light another issue that parts of the fire community still needed to work out how do we deal with outside non-federal cooperators during evolving incidents a burn over on the point fire in Idaho killed two volunteer firefighters and the conclusions from that fire made it clear that federal agencies are held at least partially liable for the safety of volunteer and non-federal cooperators working on agency controlled fires the highly publicized sunrise fire in Long Island New York burned 3,500 acres in a wildland urban interface this fire escalated from a local incident to county to state to a FEMA controlled incident in one day the lack of interagency cooperation illustrated the necessity for one uniform communication and control structure during that incident a highway patrolman tried to arrest a firefighter for starting a planned backfire on the road because at the time open fires were prohibited in the aftermath a wildfire task force was established today this group is still operating and consists of over 50 organizations from all over the northeast in Canada to take a closer look at the wildland urban interface let's get back into our groups take a quick look at the key players in this environment and discuss each players responsibilities between 1995 and 1998 we suffered 50 more fatalities 20 of which resulted from heart attacks 1999 saw 28 fatalities in 16 different states 11 of which were from heart attacks these numbers make it perfectly clear how important it is for you to have a personal commitment to physical conditioning the state of Georgia in 1997 suffered one unfortunate fatality from a common hazard that we all seem to face snags and other tree hazards while watching the following clip keep in mind that this does not only apply to sawyers and tree fallers everyone walking, working or resting in the woods should be aware of how to properly size up a work area and gain the situational awareness that's necessary to minimize your risk of being struck by a fallen tree the evaluation process doesn't begin when you get to the tree that you're going to fall it starts as you enter the stand and we use the same concepts whereas we enter the stand we start at the top look for overhead hazards come on down the stems of the trees and then look at the ground underneath in front of us here as we enter this stand we can see that we have two stems here on this tree one of them is broken off and you can see the top laid out here in front of us the other one is still standing but as we come on down the stem you notice that there's some fungi or fruiting bodies growing on the stem which are an indication of rot existing in the stem which could cause failure similar to what you see here if we look a little bit farther we can see that we've also had a failure here of trees at the base in the roots caused by we don't know what but it makes us suspect of the root system in here so now we keep going on into the stand using that same process looking overhead as we come by this large pine snag here if we look at the top we see we have a lot of large heavy limbs up there we see that some of them are broken off as we come on down the stem we see we have loose bark as we come on down we see some feeder holes from birds or woodpeckers and then as we get onto the ground we see the branches that have fallen from that tree so this tells us that should there be a strong wind or something there's a possibility that we could have some more branches coming out of this tree so keeping these things in mind as we assess this work area for hazards we look through here and we see we have a tree that's leaning at a pretty good angle in there and we know that trees grow at an angle but in this particular stand we don't really have any trees growing at an angle they're all pretty straight so we want to keep an eye on that it's an indicator there may be a problem out there come on in keep looking up we see we have more snags here off to our right come on in here same thing we look up we see we have a leaning tree over here and we follow that stem down and we see it's also a tree that's broken off mid-stem hit the ground and now is leaning into another tree similar to the same type of failure we had as we begin walking into the stand it's important to remember how hazardous the removal of leaners or hang-ups are in the timber industry about one third of all fatal falling accidents occur during the removal of hang-ups or leaners so they're extremely dangerous and hazardous to work on notice it's a small diameter tree it's still a hazardous tree requires a high skill level to work on we come around and as we're going to look at that other stem we notice that we do have more small trees here dead trees, snags we've got a precipial lean in here we may have a fracture in this stem up here it may be small but small limbs, small branches such as this cause very serious accidents and sometimes even fatalities to people so we look up as we come on around here and as we get over to this leaner that we saw earlier we've got a fracture in here and so we come around and see that it's leaned off into another one that the top's broken out of and it's just kind of balanced there same situation as we saw as we entered the stand we have a mid or high level failure in the stem because of the rot existing in this stand of trees this is another one that's an extremely hazardous situation that takes an advanced risk a good skill level a good high skilled sawyer to work on or to identify as an unfallable hazard and walk away from it now we picked this up using our process of top down and looking around and we were able to identify it before we got here so as we continue looking around in the canopy over here it looks like we have the top of a tree is pretty close to horizontal to the ground and so we have a hazard here that we don't want to get under and we don't want to walk right underneath this to find out what's going on so to get a better look at it we'll walk back around the way we came in where we've known we can walk without exposing ourselves to any hazards always looking up and down as you go evaluating the area we come around here and the snag that we pointed out earlier now we can see we've got fungus growing on it indication of a rot in the stem there and as we come on around to where we can get a better view of this top we can see that we have an extremely complex situation here it's hard to determine how to cut this tree if you can stand anywhere and safely cut this tree you can't really determine what's going to happen with the top of that tree when you cut it there's also other loose debris and overhead hazards hanging in that same tree behind it that it's hung up in and so it's a small diameter tree but yet it's a highly complex tree and so in a situation like this we may determine that we don't have the skill level available to fall this tree and we may just want to ribbon this area off and keep everybody out our hand crews, people cold trailing other sawyers identified as a hazardous no work zone and move on we know for certain that trees are going to continue to fall in the woods it's up to us to minimize our chances of being caught under one when it does and while we're looking up at these tree hazards let's remember that just beyond the tree canopy there's another hazard we need to be watching aircraft the first aviation related fire fatality was reported in 1959 when two lives were lost during a retardant drop operation since then a total of 121 fire fatalities have resulted from aviation operations now if you work in or near or around aircraft on a daily basis you'll probably want to do a more extensive aviation refresher training it's your home unit and one of the many who only occasionally use aircraft to go to and from the fire line let's listen to some thoughts from the aviation community on aviation safety I believe it's important for us to give the briefing because every carer aircraft you can look out here is different there's different configurations there's different models out here some you have to exit depending on what kind of aircraft it is there might be a different way you have to exit seating positions are different in all these aircraft everyone we have out here pretty much bigger some are smaller and every crew is going to have a little different way of how we're going to operationally brief them load them offload them and how we're going to have them how that process is going to work it's important that each crew make sure that they give a good briefing and you have to relay that to the crew boss we know they've been briefed many a times now this is our ship we have certain parameters certain rules, certain operational things that we need to have happen when we're loading them folks up and offload I encourage you at all times I have all my crew people have this book and I ask the crew bosses that they have this book and I ask them to go to the aviation section and go through the list with us as my crew is briefing their folks because it does happen and it's good for them to look at it and they know thoroughly what they're expecting from us to brief them on to follow the helicopter manager or the helicopter crew members instructions at the helispots or the helibase in regards to loading safely that you listen closely and do follow those instructions that you remain relaxed and calm there's no hurry ever around helicopters and the loading process you're not going to speed anything up by rushing all you're going to do is make a bunch of folks nervous so if you do that so it's important just to relax and be organized you have your pack all the straps tightened on your pack and everything's secured so things don't fall out it's a real problem if you have water bottles falling out and files sort of things secure all those things files can pull coals in the aircraft and if they're sticking out and your tools need to have the sheets on them you need to be prepared that's probably the most important thing it's just to relax, listen to instructions and be prepared and follow the passenger briefing to a tee so that there's no delays in the loading process in 2009 the fire community was introduced to the Incident Response Pocket Guide or IRPG we also saw the first fire line leadership class presented in Region 3 people noticed the effectiveness of simulation training and appreciated the attention paid to the human factors in fire line decision making in the year 2000 the national wildfire coordinating group or NWCG formally chartered a subcommittee to develop and implement critical leadership skills and training curriculum to talk about the recent developments on leadership we visited with a member of the leadership committee as you go through the refresher training this year think about your role as a decision maker everyone on the fire line is a decision maker at some level there's a growing awareness in the wildland fire service that our changing work environment and our changing workforce means we need to re-examine the way we prepare firefighters for the leadership and decision making demands on the fire ground what this means to me is that understanding human behavior is as important as understanding fire behavior for safe and effective firefighting currently the national wildfire coordinating group is in the process of implementing a leadership development program that includes a defined set of leadership values and principles a curriculum of formal training courses and a resource for informal development opportunities in all aspects of this leadership development program the emphasis is on decision making and experiential training one of these training tools that directly relates to the historical focus of this year's refresher training is the staff ride this tool has been widely used by the military for many years a staff ride is an on-site case study of an event from the past the design involves three phases a pre-study site visit integration phase the intent is for participants to derive lessons regarding leadership and decision making that will serve them in future dilemmas to support the implementation of this training tool the NWCG leadership committee has developed a guide to assist individuals who want to design and facilitate staff rides we are also in the process of building a staff ride library both of these resources can be found in the leadership toolbox under the fire leadership website the first package that has been developed for the library is the 1966 loop fire this was put together as the model for others to follow several additional staff ride packages are currently under development 10 to 12 fires will be available in the library by the end of 2005 these will be fires that were significant watershed events in firefighting history such as the 1937 black water fire the 1953 rattlesnake fire and the 1994 south canyon fire the goal for establishing this staff ride library is to capture key historical events as learning tools and to provide a model that can help field units wanting to develop their own staff rides for more recent fires in their local area and on an individual level I would encourage firefighters to invest some of their time in learning about the history of our business in 2001 the 30 mile fire in washington resulted in four of the 18 fatalities that year this led to the 30 mile abatement plan which called for, among other things more agency administrator involvement in fire operations an additional checklist for type 3 incident commanders it was at this time that the national park service fishing wildlife service and the US Forest Service joined his partners with BLM in making the red book an interagency document in 2002 12 of the 23 fatalities that year resulted from tragic vehicle accidents we talked with the father of one of these firefighters last year and want to share with you some of his comments in regards to the importance of driving safety I think one of the things that I would like to accomplish by coming here to Boise and participating in this video is to talk about my feelings about his life, his daughter about how important safety is because I don't believe that safety is something that we do in the beginning of the season I don't believe safety is something that we do as a refresher I believe that safety is the first mission of any emergency responder and I know that because in fact driving a automobile is not driving a truck and driving a truck is not driving an emergency response vehicle so the challenge we have is that the only thing that can help us deal with the safety hazards is experience but yet the only way you can get experience is to do it so you have to think every time you put that foot up on that cab this is an experience that I have not had in the past even if I have five years or ten years or fifteen years driving this rig this is a new experience because it's not you only it's the situation around you it's the environment in which you're operating and those dynamics are constantly changing there's plenty of laws there's plenty of regulations there's plenty of rules but at the end of the day it is a personal responsibility and what we're asking people to do is change their own behavior it's very difficult so I come back and say to anyone whether they be a career firefighter a seasonal temp a contract firefighter part time this isn't just about you this is about your family your friends and your community we can regrow the forests we can't bring you back and we will never have a life without you like it was with the life we had with you so if you can't take care of yourself take care of those you love by thinking safety before anything else as many of you know five separate vehicle accidents took the lives of 12 more firefighters this last year including eight in one accident in Oregon driving safety along with fatigue management and mitigation has become an important aspect to firefighting operations recently a review of our driving regulations and our work rest guidelines was conducted to talk about this important issue we visited with Michelle Ryerson Gret the BLM national fire safety manager there are some changes and revisions to the interagency standards for the 2004 fire season the interagency incident operations driving standards have been revised to reflect some key changes first of all the interagency standards apply to initial attack and incident operations only they do not apply to mobilization demobilization or other support related driving during these activities you will follow your agency specific regulations their interagency standards only apply again to initial attack and incident operations let's take for example if you're a single resource and you've been assigned to a large incident 100 miles away the interagency driving policies apply say your agency only allows 8 hours behind the wheel that will apply until you check in at that incident then the interagency incident operations driving standards will apply until you demo the incident during demobilization you will again follow your agency specific driving regulations for your return trip home second the interagency standards stipulate the maximum of 10 hours of driving for each driver per day and third drivers cannot exceed their 16 hour duty day limitations without written authorization the work rest and duty day limitations are tied directly to the work rest guidelines so now in regard to the work rest guidelines and length of assignment standards well they've been revised for this year as well the work shifts have been simplified and provide increased flexibility while still maintaining fatigue management specifically the 2 to 1 work rest ratio will need to be maintained however if work shifts exceed 16 hours or 2 to 1 work rest ratio cannot be met the incident commander or agency administrator will need to document a justification and your 2 to 1 work rest ratio will need to be maintained as quickly as possible the length of assignments will be maintained at 14 days however for this year the standards call for 2 days off during each full assignment the key point to remember here is that these are minimum standards and every driver, individual and crew should evaluate the need to manage their fatigue as necessary there is one other safety related item I'd like to discuss and that is the new generation fire shelter many agencies are beginning to replace their current shelters with the new generation fire shelter although existing shelters meet the required standards and will have a shelf life for a few more years we are recommending that when you conduct your fire shelter deployment exercises that you practice deploying both types of shelters this will provide proficiency in both shelter types just in case you replace your shelter in the middle of the season and get a new generation fire shelter and finally let's remember safety is all of our responsibility and there is nothing more important than ensuring every firefighter returns home safely last year it seemed as though all our past training experience and previous lessons learned were put to the test when firestorm 2003 hit southern california between october 26th and november 7th over 12,000 firefighters were dispatched out to fight 13 wildfires in southern california these fires burned 750,000 acres they destroyed 4,000 homes cost us over 120 million dollars to suppress and cause billions of dollars in damage 22 people died including one firefighter tom plymail, a captain on the auroral grand day flight crew was part of this effort we were dispatched to the grand prefire and worked through the actual scenario they faced my name is tom plymail and i'm a captain on the auroral grand day flight crew from the lowest part of this national forest we have a 28 person type 1 hand crew assigned to a type 1 helicopter on october 22nd 2003 we were dispatched to the grand prefire near fontana california the smoke is drifting west and the flames will eventually follow embers could spread with the help of high winds susie cunningham packed what she could it's hard to choose what to take you know as long as we get the kids and us and that's all that matters a few blocks away fire crews keep watch over a small patch of burning brush, tony delapena hasn't been told to evacuate just yet my house is right down there it'll probably be one of the first to go if it goes so i got my dog caught i got my horses out i got my son and my wife out the fire crew saturates carl trout line's front yard his wife and children have already left and some pictures you can see in the back there just pictures that you wouldn't want to lose if you know that you can't replace when he gets the order to leave trout line says he will join his family in the meantime he hopes the firefighters can successfully battle the grand prefire and he hopes police will find on october 23rd after briefing at the icp our simon on division b was to protect the communications site from the approaching fire before we could get there the fire burned around the area which was being protected by retardant dozer lines and a road on the 24th our new assignment was to help protect structures and assess needs in division A near Rancho Cucamonga east of day canyon the weather forecast for the day called for high temps of 80 to 85 degrees with rh and the teens knowing it was the end of the long dry summer the live fuel moistures were below the critical point of 60% most importantly a san anna wind event was forecasted for that afternoon other resources with us included the Fulton hot shots four to five dozers multiple type one engines a division supervisor and various overhead mostly type one strike team leaders around 0900 the fire was already burning aggressively under a strong northwest wind accelerating as it moved into the flats the san anna wind surfaced out of the northeast sooner than expected and pushed the fire out of the hills in a southwestern direction directly at the water treatment plant an attempt to place resources at the treatment plant was unsuccessful when an alarm sounded signifying a chlorine leak all resources were disengaged and moved to the west luckily the treatment plant was not damaged despite our evacuation the division relocated to the mouth of day canyon to make a stand an attempt to herd the fire back into the mountains a firing operation was successful along the flood canal to push the fire to the north a plan to bring dozers from the top down towards crews working from the mouth of day canyon was attempted fixed wing retardant was used to prep the ridges and helicopter drops were used to establish a foothold on the west facing slope in day canyon fire behavior was very erratic around 1600 after numerous water and retardant drops it sufficiently cooled the fire's edge we decided to begin a direct attack on the fire to check the spread into day canyon and give the dozers a chance to get some line in our cells, Fulton and Redding hotshots, a type 3 4 service engine strike team and 2 CDF crew strike teams were assigned to this task we had completed about 40 chains of direct line when we were called off due to darkness then told we had no reinforcements and new priorities were being set elsewhere we later found out that the dozers did not proceed with the plan to cut line from the top and our line was never tied in that night strong winds pushed the fire around our line and continued to the west the next day October 25th we again moved our division west towards demons canyon we met on Haven Avenue where the pavement ended another forecast was for a continued Santa Ana wind condition high temps in the upper 80s RHs at 10 to 15% and strong northeasterly winds the previous day we had witnessed very aggressive fire behavior with erratic winds, whirls and mass ignitions resources assigned with us were Fulton, Big Bear and Lassen hotshots the Big Hill flight crew one type 3 strike team of 4 service engines safety officer and a division supervisor also present despite a previous evacuation were numerous homeowners and the media a 10 to 15 mile an hour northeast wind was producing fairly aggressive fire behavior spreading laterally and approaching the subdivision from Deer Canyon about a half a mile to the northeast our objective was to protect the homes from Haven west to Archibald Avenue at around 9 o'clock before beginning our tactical assignment the division supervisor held a briefing at the end of Haven now let's get into our groups and work through the exercise in your student workbook now let's go back to California and watch how this fire progressed our safety discussion at the briefing centered on extreme fire conditions maintaining our LCES specifically multiple escape routes the location of adjoining crews setting trigger points and not getting overextended our plan of attack from Haven was to drive the fire north back into the mountains Big Bear and Fulton were sent up the dirt portion of Haven to bring fire back towards the subdivision supported by the 4 service engine strike team the Lassen hot shots were to backfire north of the subdivision supported by ourselves Big Hill and the type 1 engines this operation was successful in protecting the homes east of Haven when this operation was completed around 1200 hours we redeployed to Hermosa Avenue the fire was well established in the hills to the north moving slowly southwest as a contingency we used dozers to put in control lines and safety zones developed trigger points for firing and began site preparations around Hermosa our trigger point was when the fire hit the ridge directly northeast of our position we informed the division supervisor of our plan he approved and told us to use our best judgment we held in place the fire was out of the influence of the strongest northeast wind until about 1800 hours the winds suddenly surfaced and increased to around 30 miles an hour pushing a flame front aggressively towards Hermosa and Archibald when our trigger point was reached we did minimal firing around Hermosa knowing we did not want to add unnecessary momentum to the main fire we remained to hold our line when conditions became unsafe we used our escape routes and half the crew exited to Hermosa and the other half went out Archibald we later heard that all the homes on Hermosa survived at around 1900 hours our crew regrouped at Archibald Avenue to assess the possibility of firing around structures shortly after we arrived a massive fire front drove across the north end of Archibald and headed towards the northeast corner of the town of Upland by a strike team of CDF hand crews and told to head back to camp the Type 1 engines remained on scene for structure protection and to this day I'm not sure how many structures near Archibald were lost on November 7, 2003 a six-person information collection team was assembled in Southern California the team sought to capture the experience of those who fought these fires capture the important lessons learned by them and learn how these events affected the firefighting strategy, tactics, techniques and decision making of those involved you could obtain a copy of this report from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learn Center website this website address along with many other useful links can be found in the Backier Student Workbook now let's listen again to Tom Plymail as he shares with us the lessons he learned personally from his experience on the Grand Prix Fire we spent a total of 11 shifts on the Grand Prix Fire and the interesting part about that was it seemed like the first three shifts were spent in initial attack to see everybody in a reactionary state every morning looking at the fire the fire behavior and deciding that okay, our plan is no good, no more we have to reformulate all our plans and then reacting in such a way which creates a lot of pressure on the incident overhead and also creates a lot of pressure on the leaders of the crews engines, crews strike team leaders and that one of the things I noticed the most about some of the action that people took was they did not realize how it affected others and I think what I'm referring to is maybe a freelancing aspect people putting fire on the ground with no regard for how it is going to affect the main fire and how it is going to affect any other resources around them with no coordination no communication and on another in another aspect people who did act independently met the objectives of fire management as far as initiating backfires coordinating with other resources communicating their intent setting trigger points getting basically doing it in a safe way there is a big difference between the two an important lesson learned was the concept of planning and having alternate plans in fire line leadership were taught to use acronym PACE which is have a plan, have an alternate have a contingency and have an emergency plan and if you keep that in mind you can stay focused on what you're doing and then you always have your backup you can always fall back to your alternative and that may turn into your new plan so it keeps and hopefully you don't get to the point where you have to use your emergency plan but that actually did happen at times when people basically the fire overwhelmed them and then they had to cut and run another lesson learned would be proper scouting and size up and then at times instead of rushing in to do something is to take what we call a tactical pause step back, reevaluate get some feedback from your crew members or from other resources and find out if that's really what you want to do if it's going to gain you anything risk versus gain another lesson learned I found was very valuable is under these type of fire conditions a lot happening very emotion filled operations there was a lot of good work that was done one of the valuable things we got out of it was actually having after action reviews immediately after a shift regardless of how tired we were or where we were we needed to let the crew have an opportunity to say something about what they'd seen and allow them to express themselves and from a leadership standpoint actually you build a level a higher level of trust and cohesiveness with your crew if you let them say something about what has just happened our crew uses the incident response pocket guide to accomplish our after action reviews in the field after assignments what we'll do is we'll have a shotgun circle where everybody gets a chance to say something a more formalized AAR is done back at the base when we return back where we can document it and come up with some lessons learned safety guidelines, policies and procedural requirements only have value to the extent in which they are followed it was suggested among other things to title this program back to the basics one of the developers of the fire line leadership course was quoted as saying typically standards amount to collections of policy directives developed as a reaction to a tragedy we have all we need now just not in the right place do we have all of our safety guidance that we need at this point in time do we have too much are the current guidelines ingrained in our daily fire line operations as I stated before the 2003 fire season was the third worst season we have experienced since 1910 in terms of fatalities the lessons learned from this last fire season in many ways were lessons relearned another argument could be made stating that we continue to learn from each and every fire we go on did the Southern California fire show us a new fire environment like never seen before survivors of the 1947 fires in Maine may say no do recent accidents only serve as reminders of lessons that we have seen before or are they actually teaching us something new the 2003 saw-tooth prescribed fire in Arizona took the life of a very experienced firefighter and taught us that we face many of the same hazards on a prescribed fire as we do on any wildfire it also reminded us that given a certain set of circumstances we are all vulnerable to finding ourselves in an explosive situation regardless of how many years of experience we have what is an adequate escape route or safety zone in the light of the worst case fire behavior consider the man Gulch fire the loop, ship island, south canyon 30 mile, sawtooth, the Kramer fire and countless others we don't have time to mention in all cases escape routes and safety zones were identified they simply proved to be inadequate given the difference between expected fire behavior and actual fire behavior isn't the deadliest common denominator of tragedy fire simply underestimating the worst case fire behavior the Kramer fire which overran two hell attack crew members in Idaho looks so much like the 1979 1979 ship island fire and burned only eight miles away from that location that you can't help but reflect on what we really learned in 1979 to examine this further let's look at the 1949 man Gulch fire in Montana and the 1994 south canyon fire in Colorado are we really studying our history and applying the lessons learned in our daily operations the Kramer fire accident prevention plan again re-emphasized the need for management responsibility and the U.S. Forest Service is now requiring a re-certification process for all their type 3 incident commanders the benefits however of this effort and of all of our past efforts in providing safety guidance to the fire community will be lost if each and every firefighter on the line fails to take personal responsibility of their own safety it is the responsibility of every firefighter to remain a student of fire to learn from the past and apply lessons learned to the fire situations that you will encounter this year it has been and remains our goal to have another zero fatality fire season the last time this was accomplished was 47 years ago and that means that unless you started your career before 1957 you have not gone through one fire season without losing at least one of your fellow firefighters think of what it would be like to end this fire season without having to read any investigation reports or attend any firefighter funerals or without having to tell any parents about the death of their child we know that we are in a high risk business and that accidents do happen but when you look at the statistics the vast majority of fire operation fatalities are the result of some form of human error and are in fact avoidable now to conclude this training we'd like you to either as a class or in your groups complete the final exercise in your student workbook can we have another zero fatality fire season can we repeat 1957 this is not a question that we can answer as an organization that question needs to be answered by each and every firefighter every time they are in the line of duty now despite our hopes we still need to plan for that worst case scenario and for this reason you are still required to get with your local facilitator and review the proper procedures for deploying your fire shelters once that is done you will be able to head out to the fire line this year and begin to write the next chapter in our fire history what is it going to say we at the BLM training unit would like to thank you for your attention and participation and we wish you a very safe fire season