 The intent of this module is to broaden the scope of fire shelter training through a case study. It will be delivered through the story of shelter deployments on the Little Venus Fire as told by two Unweap fire use crew members, Ryan Jordan and module leader Latham Johnson. It will be told in two parts with one exercise. Part one will deal with the events leading up to the deployments. The facilitator will then lead you in a decision-making exercise. Part two will describe the actual deployments and the lessons learned. Refer to information provided in your student workbook as well as any appropriate references in the IRPG to make your decisions. On July 18, 2006, 10 individuals assigned to the Little Venus Fire on the Chichon National Forest as part of a fire use module were entrapped and deployed fire shelters. No significant injuries were sustained. No personnel were hospitalized. And all personnel were safely evacuated from the fire. This incident is a significant event but differs from past deployments. The involved personnel were not actively engaged in the performance of an operational fire line assignment. They were en route to a camp location to debrief with the crew they were replacing. They would not have a fire line assignment until the next operational period. Unweap has an excellent reputation for safety and professionalism. Partly because of this reputation, they rotate trainees into the module throughout the season. Latham Johnson's crew consisted of four regular crew members, a detailed assistant module leader, one member detailed from the Boise Smoke Jumpers, two from the Crassel Hell Attack, and two detailed from the Chichon National Forest. All crew members were well qualified, physically fit, and experienced firefighters. Issues facing the crew included communication and logistical problems. The National Weather Service had also issued a red flag warning for a passing cold front earlier that morning. Our assignment was to replace, there was already a fire use module at the heel of the fire or up at Venus Cabin, which was eight miles into the wilderness area. And our assignment was to replace them because they had been on the assignment for 13 days. So on day 14 they were going to get out of there. And basically it was going to be a briefing. We got the main picture at the district office, and then it was supposed to be assignment, hike in eight miles, meet that module, and get more of a briefing, get more assignments assigned to us, and more details. And then stay at the fire for two weeks. And we got there, the mules hadn't even had any of our equipment loaded on them. This is around 1300. I mean the day started off late, we didn't have an hour and a half drive to get out to the trailhead. So things just started getting bumped back later and later. And so when we were sitting at the trailhead, we started assisting the packer loading up the mules because we knew we had to kind of get on the trail, get into the module that evening. The fire behavior that you could see anything of was a little bit of smoke that was the head of the fire at the time. And that was way up top, high elevation, and there was a hotshot crew and a Type 2 crew up there. So what we did at that trailhead was introduce ourselves to the new joining two members from the district. Talked about where we're from, our fire experience a little bit, and just a brief idea of what we're going to be doing. Communications, you could tell we're already scratchy because we couldn't get in touch with the module that we were supposed to tie in with, which was eight miles up the canyon. We were able to hear the ICP at the trailhead and the crew that was up on top of the fire at the head. The other communication concern was trying to get the packers to have radios. We knew that they were taking off in front of us and we gave them a radio and told them a little bit how to use it, but he had no interest in turning it on. He said, I'll turn it on if I need it. The packers were local from the area. One was a middle-aged gentleman that's been contracted with that district for quite a while and he had a helper who was a younger boy about 14 years old that was from that area also. About the 15, 20 minutes were sitting there. The one thing that people brought up was how this nice walk into the wilderness in the morning, nice and cool and good part of the day has now turned into two, three o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day. And that was the only thing really brought up other than the length of the hike without knowing what was been going on the last day or two in that draw. So when we left Jack Creek Trailhead, our anticipations were engaging in no fire activity. It was going to be a casual walk in eight miles to the Venus cabin. Pretty relaxed, no no mechs. We weren't supposed to be seeing fire. Things were supposed to be a nice walk in the wilderness. About an hour and a half in, we started getting some communication with the Black Hills lookout and at this point there was a little bit of radio traffic, still scratchy, not real clear, that there was fire on both sides of the draw and they would recommend us to stage for a little while. And that was an event where we all stopped, got together, kind of heard what was going on and at that point we didn't feel any discomfort because we couldn't see anything that they were talking about, couldn't see the column. We had the mule train in front of us. So if we stopped there was no way to get hold of them because they didn't have the radio on. We tried at that point so we knew that we felt that we would go until we saw the fire because we still had a ways. We were only at mile two at this point when we were supposed to be going eight miles so we couldn't really make sense of what was going on with that. And two, the mule train was in front of us and there was no way to get hold of them so we thought we'd go try to contact them as well. So at that first stop when we heard Black Hills telling us a little bit about the fire being on both sides of the draw we should hold up. One of our module leaders, the one that was from the district working with our crew knew where that module unit was talking about. So he told us that he knew the location where the fire was on both sides of the draw. He knew an alternate route that would get us around that area. He felt comfortable enough to keep walking in there. So then we proceeded on the trail up to the Anderson Creek Trailhead or the Anderson Creek River junction. And that's where he explained a little bit that this is the alternate route. If we need to go that way we can. And at this time we still didn't have a visual on the fire so we decided to keep moving up the gray bull drainage. And at this time we hadn't tied into the mules. And so we continued about another 200 yards past or about 400 yards past the Anderson Creek junction and came up over a rise topography feature. And that's when we encountered the first visual of the fire coming at us. This is when we knew we weren't going to be progressing any further. Everybody changed their mindset that this is a fire situation. We put our Nomex on, hard hats came out, you know PPE became a parent that we needed it. At this point the fire use module advised some people to start turning around and heading back down the trail. We hadn't met up with the mule train yet so we were actually trying to establish communication there. Again with the radio none of that was helping. We tried whistling a little bit. And what was confusing was we didn't know how they could be going that much further ahead of us because the fire was half a mile away from us. And so we knew they had to be in between us. We stood there for about 5-10 minutes. Knew that we had to get out of there. Right, we were starting to turn around. The younger boy with 5 mules came cruising out of the timber. He came by us. One of the members told him to keep continuing down the Gray Bowl River and get to the Jack Keek Trailhead. And at that time most of the crew members had been reversed order. Our turnaround point, people started hiking down. So at the turnaround point myself and two other of the module crew members, one of them was a leader, the other guy was the local district guy. And we waited there for another minute to see if the older packer would be coming out. And we didn't see him. We started going down because we knew we had no more time to waste. And I remember actually looking at my module leader saying, I don't think he's going to make it. And that's when we knew we had to start moving. The Unuit module is now at a critical decision point. What would you do? We all know the ultimate outcome was good. However, decisions had to be made and action had to be taken to ensure that outcome. Given the story thus far, visualize yourself as a member of the crew and consider some of the possible outcomes or what-ifs and the actions you would take for each. Get into your groups and discuss your assessment of the situation. Utilizing the map in your student workbook and the IRPG determine a plan or plans of action for your what-ifs. Your facilitator will give you 15 minutes and will then randomly select someone from your group to communicate a plan of action in the form of instructions to your crew. There are no right or wrong answers.