 Well I think the 10 and 18 they need drummed in your head because that's what you're living by out here and that's what happened here too because we wouldn't go direct the 18 and 10 they won't let us go in there we could have got somebody in real trouble because it did keep flaring up and I think that's a good idea you know just keep on that. I think the incident pocket response guide has been one of the best tools that is offered up to the wildland firefighter in the last two or three years. We've been using a variation of that for a lot of years because you can't keep everything in your in the back of your head. I'm certainly at the point in my career where now I'm thinking about a lot of different things all the time in terms of what I've got to do in managing the crew but with the pocket response guide if there's anything that I'm I'm not quite sure about I can go back to that pocket response guide I keep it real handy with me everybody on my crew has one of these and they just pull it out and flip it out to do whichever page and there's the information that they need you know it's been real helpful. Well another important aspect of the book is for people who again aren't regular flyers it's something that they can look at and make sure that if the passenger briefing isn't complete or an aspect of it hasn't been covered that they can ask the question oh you forgot to mention where's the fire extinguisher could you point that out maybe I missed where you said it was that kind of thing so it gives everybody a common ground the basic safety items that we want everybody to know about how to get out of aircraft where to go how to approach it how to depart it those are all covered in the pocket guide and it gives everybody a chance to to think about what is going to occur during your briefing period your approach to the aircraft what we expected you in the aircraft which basically not to move around certainly not to smoke to keep your personal belongings in a bag or in your pocket we don't want things flying around those are things that are covered in the in the briefing guide and help give everybody a good understanding of what's going on. As I start getting ready to prepare for fire season the first thing I do is I start increasing my running so that I know that when fire season hits I'm in excellent physical condition the other thing that I try to do is I pull out some of the books of courses that I've been to certain books such as the incident response pocket guide fire line handbook other literature just to refresh myself so that fire season comes around I'm ready to go after it and I'm ready to go after it safely. Well in terms of safety I mean safety really knows no boundaries and yeah it is an international problem it's attached to firefighting and it's a it's a dangerous industry that we're in. It's two-fold one is pay attention to your leader a person has the experience and secondly and probably more importantly is head up and butt down pay attention to the to the look up look down look around understand fire behavior and what's going on around you pay attention to the weather don't get so focused on the day-to-day line digging or whatever it may be look at the bigger picture and pay attention to what your crew said. 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 as someone who's lost a piece of 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 so 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 which as we all know is 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 in 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 hello and welcome to fire line safety refresher training the purpose of this training is to reacquaint you with some risk management tools that you'll need for this upcoming fire season these include the 10 standard firefighting orders the 18 watch out situations lces and several other helpful references that will help you stay out of harm's way you'll be asked to use these tools as work through some fire scenarios that occurred in the 2002 fire season as many of you know the 2002 season was the second largest fire season in the past 50 years over 68,000 fires burned nearly 7 million acres this nearly doubled our 10 year average the national preparedness level rose to pl 5 5 weeks earlier than ever before and remained at pl 5 for a record setting 62 days by early July 28,000 firefighters and support personnel which is the maximum number of civilian resources we had available had been dispatched to wildland fire incidents the US military was called in to help among with some international assistance from Canada Australia and New Zealand on the biscuit fire alone in southern Oregon there were at one time four incident management teams in an area command team assigned along with over 7,000 people the numbers generated by the 2002 fire season were incredible but the number that we're concerned with here most at the BLM training unit is the 23 precious lives that were lost in this huge effort of the 23 reported fatalities last year 12 resulted from vehicle or heavy equipment accidents six from aviation operations four as the result of heart attacks or physical fitness testing and one from a falling tree there were seven entrapments and three turnover incidents reported in 2002 but thankfully none of these led to any fatalities now you may have heard this before there's nothing out there worth a human life when you consider the 23 lives that were lost this last fire season please consider also the countless lives that were directly affected by this loss it has been and remains our goal to have a zero fatality fire season but this goal cannot be accomplished without your personal commitment to safety during this training you will be reminded of many of the hazard you will face during this upcoming season and you'll review procedures for mitigating them we urge you to pay close attention and remain mindful of your safety and the safety of your coworkers throughout this fire season good luck with this refresher training now to get you started let's dust off our fire hats and look at a downhill line construction scenario let's go to southern Oregon and visit the tiller fire and I don't know what they're gonna do down this west side that is just terrible ground it's full of snags I don't know I think I'd have a hard time asking a crew to go direct on that stuff just because the rollouts too bad it's downhill line construction there's no safety zones the only escape routes or the safety zones there's one must be it must be here well when we got our assignment today on division Charlie we had two things we wanted to accomplish two major objectives one is to try to catch this fire behind me before it got down to the creek bottom and and got below where we're at where we're at now and the other was to catch a piece of this slide over on the other side of the ridge both pieces huge safety concerns for the steep slopes and the heavy fuels limited safety zones and escape routes it takes a while to get out to look like so before we drift before we would even think of engaging on on this we did a couple things and and one of them that was specific in the incident action plan that we took a look at the pages two and three and in the green section of the response guide look up look down and look around special attention to fuels fuel moisture and the end of terrain the other thing that we paid real close attention to today was the lces checklist and on page 8 the downhill line checklist we're probably gonna have to build a line down there at least on the other side if not on this side and and those are huge concerns when you're dealing with this kind of fuel in this kind of terrain weather wise on this incident it's characteristic that the morning is a pretty good inversion layer that puts a cap on everything keeps fire activity fairly low doesn't doesn't get up and make a lot of runs and you get a lot of smoke and you can't see anything for much over a couple hundred yards characteristically that inversional lift about one o'clock two o'clock in the afternoon some days even later and when the inversion does lift you've usually got an increase in dry dry bulb temperatures into the mid 80s and a decrease of the humidity is down into the 20s one of the things that we use on this fire is a fire behavior potential for the tiller complex and start to get real concerned when the relative humidity gets down to 28 or below and the dry bulb temperature gets 82 and above when it gets above or the relative humidity gets below 22 percent and the dry bulb temperature gets up gets above about 86 degrees then then we're in the potential fire behavior that's extreme and that's a real concern to us in these fuel types when when the temperatures warm up in the afternoon after the inversions lifted the humidity goes down it's not uncommon to have some pretty good torching of small groups of trees short short little crown fires or crown runs maybe a couple hundred yards at the most and then spotting up to a quarter mile away fortunately for the last three days we haven't had a lot of that kind of activity but the potential is there as it gets hotter and drier in the afternoon now with that information given let's go into your groups and complete exercise number one in your student workbook well I hope that loosened up some of the cobwebs and got you thinking about firefighting again let's go back and see how Algar and his division handled this situation we made a decision this morning that we weren't going to do anything until we could have lces in place and the biggest concern again is the escape routes in the safety zones we didn't want to take any action on it while the inversion was still set in because we weren't sure what we had down in there and we didn't want to get people down into the down into the heavy fuels and not knowing exactly what was there so what we decided to do was wait until that and the inversion lifted a little bit and we got a little bit of a column coming up so we could see exactly where things were and one of the things that we did because we don't have excellent safety zones and we don't have the best escape routes we have to use the roads for escape routes one of the mitigation measures we put in place was the use of helicopters with buckets and big heavies big cranes so that we could get plenty of water to support the incident while we had people working on it. Now we've got the helicopters working air support for us and keeping things wetted down try to keep the keep the fire to a minimum we've got a bulldozer coming down from the top building line we've got two field observers up there watching that fire very carefully as we again construct line downhill we're gonna have the hot shot crew and the type 2 crew come up from the bottom and build line to meet with that where that bulldozer finishes off and it's uh it's 1600 and we've got about four hours of working light left maybe four and a half concerns are again that the fire activity can continue to increase and we've had a lot of good fire activity at night here so as we get people working down into that down into that drainage and up from the bottom very very concerned that we maintain that air support so we've got got good backup for them in case that fire gets hot concerned that we get people too far down and and have a long ways for them to get out to come back out the escape route to the safety zone which is the road so again we've got we've got always got at least two field observers in there watching what's going on to make sure that people are working in a safe situation trigger points on this operation are certainly if we did lose the helicopters that are providing support by keeping things wet any time that fire gets down into the bottom it starts coming down that ridge and gets down towards the bottom of that drainage where it could make a run back up that that the folks that are working on that ridge line of the field observers will let us know and we'll pull crews out we've been very very attentive to that very concerned about having enough time to get people out and back to the road so the two primary trigger points are fire getting down into the drainage below those crews that are working on the ridge and loss of the helicopters that are providing water welcome back now let's back up just a little bit and talk about what most of us are going to see at the start of each operational period the briefing we talked to a number of people this year about briefings and last year we heard people telling us that there are different kinds of briefings listen to how one firefighter describes the subtle differences between morning briefing given by the incident management teams the operational briefing and even a tactical briefing reflect on the various briefings you have received and think about what you can do to improve the sharing of vital information a morning briefing would be something facilitated by the plant section chief or he goes around from section to section asking them to give briefings specific to what they're working on so that you get a comprehensive picture of what's going on that particular incident an operational briefing is something that I perceive as a briefing given by a division supervisor a strike team leader or a crew boss to the people who are actually going to be carrying out the operations for that day and that briefing needs to get into more specifics it's kind of a trickle down thing you know and so the vision soup gives his briefing to the crew bosses the crew bosses give their briefing to the crews which is why these briefings need to be as accurate as possible I think a tactical briefing it's something that changes constantly because you're in such a dynamic environment and if you look at the risk management cycle there's no other way for you to do it but to reevaluate continuously and if you reevaluate and a tactical briefing is unnecessary at the end of your cycle when you reach a decision point you might not have to change anything but you may have to reevaluate and get back together with your crews and give them new instructions and your new instructions might require more or less comprehensive breathing briefing in other words conditions may change weather conditions may change you may need to address that fire behavior may change you're gonna have to address that resource resources on the incident may change you need to address that I think the tactical briefings come at those points when there's a change in the situation I think that the briefing checklist in the IRPG is an essential tool because there are two kinds of briefings that I've seen historically there's the briefing with too much information and there's the briefing with not enough information and what I'm looking for is useful information and it's hard for me to determine what that useful information is off the cuff so by referring to this I sort of develop a framework to work that fire from and so I take this briefing checklist and I go through it carefully and I come to areas such as such as communications and then I pull out my oats book and I make sure that I have gotten accurate information I write it down and I make sure that when I come to that part in the briefing checklist when I'm giving the briefing that I'm able to give those guys most accurate information I can so as I go through the checklist I come to communications I refer to my oats book and I say air to ground frequency will be 168 650 and as I'm giving it I'm looking out into into the faces of the people that I'm talking to and I expect to see them writing that information down in their oats books and I'm also hoping that we have an attitude of we're in this together and they're following along with me in this oats book and it's kind of a checks and balances thing so that so that they are sure that I'm giving everything that they need to work with so this is a giant time-saver because I know that everybody's anxious to engage and they're anxious to give the briefing and get everybody going but it seems like if you do that too quickly without actually checking the information that you're giving to people then you're gonna miss something and you're gonna spend that time you thought you were gaining chasing that information down again and getting it back out to your people and so you interrupt the operational temple by doing that and so to me that's that's the crux of giving a good briefing making sure they've got the critical information they need or the useful information they need to be operational one of the key key issues that we want to continually address part of lcs part of risk mitigation is the communication factor and how do we ensure that the right communications are being being accomplished between subordinate and supervisor vice versa all the way up and down the chain one of the key tools we use is is the briefing checklist that's in the instant response pocket guide it's on the the inside of the back cover a critical point you need to make sure that every one of those points are covered in your briefings whether it's on the in the briefing that we give is a as a command team or whether crew soup is giving his or her crew and make sure every one of those points are covered whether or not covered in the direct order that are listed there make sure every one of those points are covered in anything else that's appropriate to the situation there's good checklist in here for giving briefings a lot of people don't give a lot of briefings like a lot of the the superintendents do on a day-to-day basis there have been days right given as many as seven briefings on this fire so you get with practice you get pretty good at that but for somebody that doesn't do that a lot there's an excellent excellent briefing checklist on the back of this and I've been to a number of fires this year where someone who you know you would normally think would have a lot of experience is falling back on this to make sure he's got he or she has all the bases covered so I think it's an excellent tool good job aid for anybody from a first-year firefighter on through an operation section chief to give a good thorough briefing it's you know it's nice to have the checklist there so you make sure that your your people are getting the right kind of information particularly when it has to do with safety you can never give people enough information we can't stress enough how important it is to pay close attention to what is being said at operational briefings both as the presenter and as a briefing receiver take good notes follow along using the briefing checklist and never be afraid to ask questions if something is not clear now after the morning briefing everyone seems to go about their daily assignments some of you may head to the hella spot or airport others to the fire line by way of trucks buses engines or crew carriers let's assume for now that you're heading out to the fire line by way of aircraft Heidi Dinkler a hella-based manager on the McNally fire in California shared with us her thoughts on aviation safety and on our ship when you're flying in the first aid kit and fire extinguisher both on the left side not on the wall and your ELT is also mounted right between the pilot seat and the back well I think maybe a way to describe a little bit of what happens at a hella base is to think of the pictures most of us have seen about seeing pictures of the way aircraft carriers operate we have a deck just like an aircraft carrier confined space that we operate out of and there's a lot of things going on here we're in a busy operational period during the day on going at the same time we're moving passengers crews we're moving single overhead people for recon we're bringing cargo in and out helicopters are coming in and out for water dropping missions it's all coordinated through the deck and it's it's critical that we for the safety of everyone concerned make sure that we know where everybody is at any given time so when we ask that people please pay attention to the helitack we want them to move in a direct line either from the passenger loading area to the helicopter or from the helicopter back to that passenger unloading area just please understand that we're trying to run a tight ship here and for the safety of everybody we need to know where everybody's at else most of us don't do these emergency incidents every day and you go especially the winter period without having incidents for quite a while so that's why the 217 refresher class and basic aviation safety is so important to review that material prior to the beginning of fire season and even during each incident using the pocket guide can it provides you a checklist of safety items of requirements for handling tools and cargo for landing zones how big they should be if you're even if you're working on a crew and you're asked to help construct a helispot that gives the dimensions that we require as minimums for each type of helicopter very important for crew members to make sure that they cover the passenger briefing thoroughly and completely the guide provides a checklist for you to just read down and make sure that all those important aspects of the aircraft and the flight are covered in all aspects of of incident aviation we do risk assessment and and try and mitigate any of those hazards that we can and probably one of the easiest most basic ways that we can help do that is to provide a safety briefing prior to every flight and everybody from the ops chief to a crew member going up to a spot to cut line it's their responsibility to listen and pay attention to that safety briefing not only for the safety of everybody else on the aircraft but you know for yourself of course as well you may have been a crew member on a helicopter the year before but the they may have changed the location of the fire extinguisher it may have changed it since last week for whatever reason there's things to know about the aircraft where the fuel shutoff switches are where the survival kit is if you experience a hard landing you need to know where that equipment is and how to use it and it's everybody's responsibility to pay attention it does sometimes get a little bit boring for the people who fly a lot but that's the kind of thing that can save your life i think if i would offer some helpful advice for people that are going to be coming to the helibase this season for a flight we ask a couple things if you're single overhead for and for everyone involved please come dress in the proper gear no make shirt pants leather boots your single overhead we ask that you come to the helibase ask for the helibase manager schedule your mission if possible ahead of time if not check them with the helibase manager they'll arrange your flight some helpful hints for the crews that really help us out when you arrive at the parking area designated for for crew trucks those kind of things engines if you're coming as a strike team park in those areas please try and make sure that you watch your litter and things all those things that fly around the helibase for us can cause damage very expensive damage to aircraft so please keep your litter bagged and together with your equipment have your crew properly outfitted it's very helpful if you've manifested your crew prior to have their correct flight weight which is fully attired with their gear that's the proper flight weight have that list with names and weights and ready to give to the personnel at the loading area to start manifesting it makes things a lot easier we ask that you stay together as a group and have a designated crew leader captain approach the personnel area and give them that list let them know that you're here and that you're ready to fly asking if they have a certain way that they like your tools and equipment bundled or a place that they'd like them that helps everything run smoothly around the helibase aerial operations took the lives of six people during the 2002 fire season for those of you that will only be using aircraft occasionally please pay close attention to the pre-flight briefings you will receive for those of you that will be working around aircraft on a daily basis you may consider doing a more formalized refresher on aviation hazards at your home unit there are many aspects to aviation safety bucket operations retardant drops communications with air resources etc and we remember to go over the blue sections in your IRPG now aviation safety is very important but many of you will be heading to the fire by way of dusty narrow dirt roads let's talk a little bit about driving hazards to from and on wildfires to help us out with this we talked to three people whose lives were dramatically affected by a fatal driving accident that occurred last year on the clams national forest there's five of us we were we didn't busy all night mopping up along the spur road and it was kind of time to wind down it was about one one one thirty in the morning and we decided to have lunch so we're eating our our sack lunches from camp i think three of the people were inside the engine and me and one of the firefighters john self was outside sleeping and we got the call to go and find out if the kentucky 8 crew wanted to leave and go to a spot fire in our division so we decided to go down the road and find out and we hadn't got much sleep because we're every half an hour we're taking weather for division b because the plume is hot shots are doing a burnout operation and we had to track them and give them the weather so we're hand down the road and it's kind of everyone's everyone's weary everyone's but they seem to be awake um kind of just it's a routine things going down the road again we've been down the road many times and there's a little warming fire on the right hand side of the road and we didn't really think anything of it started going around it and uh just a little bit past it and we feel a lob bang and the back end of the engine feels like it slumps down at that time the uh engineer at the time helly depolo said oh no and uh at first they really didn't understand i thought she might have blown a tire or ran something over or you know just it didn't seem like it was an emergency at the time and then uh as i was looking at the front of the cab on the road i saw the road start to tilt so i knew right then and there at the engine was rolling my first instinct was to say you know get out get out but there is no time for anyone to do anything um at which point the engine rolled and it rolled dark on the road and right when it started to roll you couldn't see right in front of your base because it went off the road um i just remember it rolling many times and it went from side to side to end over end side to side again you could feel it kind of you know taking out trees or hitting rock outcroppings and every time it rolled i uh you know i thought you know i'm not going to make it do this it is it hit on my side i saw a tree probably another 10 feet away as we were rolling and i think when it rolled over struck the tree which uh we were rolling sideways and when it struck the tree it kind of made started going in a cartwheel type motion like end over end like front end over end and um we rolled got to a point where it thought i thought it was gonna stop didn't came to like kind of hang in and then it started to roll again and rolled hard and then finally it stopped and when it stopped my biggest worry is it was gonna start rolling again and i climbed out and i started asking you know who's alive is anybody out there is anybody alive to me it seemed like his emt things just kicked right in and he was just going pulled me away got me away from the engine and then um i was like you know please don't leave and he was like you know i gotta go gotta go help my buddy because he could hear our friend up on the mountain he was in pretty bad pain he was yelling hurting and uh made sure i was all right he knew that i was doing fine i was talking with him and everything i was having trouble with my legs but he knew i was okay and he took off and uh i don't remember ever seeing him after that i know that he got pretty far off he was trying to help other people and um from there i just just sat on this mountain the loneliest feeling you could ever have is being stranded out there not knowing who's alive and who's not well just like the issue of firefighters attitudes that the things we admire in firefighters are the things that create the greatest problem the same thing applies to driving 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 10 years or 15 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 when i talk to alex and ryan they speak to me of having 100% faith and confidence in heather's ability to drive that truck and i hear them talking from their hearts and i believe it and i talk with heather throughout her engine academy and the kinds of challenges she saw because driving that truck was like no other experience in her life there is no way that we can replicate the weather that night the fire conditions that night the condition of the roadway the conditions of fatigue there's no way we can replicate that in a training environment you are going to be faced with that challenge every time you get in that vehicle so again it comes back to the fundamental idea appoint yourself dispatch yourself as your own safety officer and when you're driving that vehicle understand that it's just not your behavior but it's the behavior of your environment and the behavior of your other people around you can have the greatest impact on whether or not that response is successful or unsuccessful just for your information this was not an isolated incident last year the fire community also lost several other lives and two other driving related accidents we need to remember that in our occupation we typically find ourselves driving in the most hazardous conditions we ever encounter as drivers quite often on marginal unimproved narrow dusty smoky roads when we're under tremendous stress and fatigue many times in the largest vehicle we have ever driven so please be careful and know your vehicle's limitations and your own mental and physical limitations now some of you will never leave fire camp many of our fire personnel are in support functions which is just as important as suppression personnel in the evaluations of previous refresher videos we heard from numerous support people that we should include some refresher information specifically designed for people who did not go out on the fire line for this reason we talked to several support people this last summer and here's what they had to say I think the reason that support personnel need to be refreshed is because they're just a few puffs of wind away from being involved in a fire and they need to keep that in mind too they need to understand the 10 and 18 may apply to them probably won't but if it does that's not the time to be scratching your head wondering what is this all about but even even if you're not required to take a pack test I think it's in everyone's best interest to be as physically fit as they can because it is cold or it is hot or it's rainy and windy and again if if you're sick or under the weather you're not performing at the top of your capabilities if you're not performing at the top of your capabilities that long line of getting a shovel into the hands of the firefighter maybe we could I think it's important for everyone because it's a team effort and so you just really have to focus on not only what's important for you and your job task but what's important for your team your crew and the overall effort and that's why it would be important well I think the best advice I've heard is be fluid and flexible because every time you go out it's going to be different and you are going to have different personalities to deal with you're going to have a totally different situation you may be sent to three or four different places it changes every single time and the most important thing to have is a good attitude and a lot of patience as a support person I really haven't had any firefighting experience I'm a novice at this and today I got to come out here and take a look at what actually happens on the line and I'm finding it very helpful to see what people are really doing um you almost tend to lose track of the fact that there's a fire sometimes because you get so involved in the support aspects but this really is the primary thing that's happening at a fire is fighting it many support functions fall under the category of thankless jobs but we should remember how vital these functions are to the overall operation because while you may be heading out to the fire line they're making sure that you have a good plan you have food to eat water to drink and tools to work with they're also making sure that the media and local civilians are well informed so that they don't need to visit you on the fire line when you're trying to get your work done now once you make it to the fire line all the hazards associated with fighting an actual wildfire present themselves fortunately we have some excellent reference material to help us manage these risks first and foremost is the incident response pocket guide this book contains material that will keep us mindful of the risk management process including the use of the standard firefighting orders lces and the 18 situations to shout watch out let's start by examining the standard firefighting orders you may have learned these as the 10 fire orders but this last year the nwcg the national wildfire coordinating group has officially reintroduced the original standard firefighting orders this change is scheduled to be updated in the irpg in the near future so for now and for your convenience we have listed them in your student workbook john krebbs a retired fire management officer outlines very articulately how the 10 standard orders were originally designed to be used as a logical working process rather than an arbitrary checklist let's listen carefully as john takes a few minutes to give us his explanation of the original standard orders it was my understanding Ted that the 10 standard orders the original 10 standard orders came from as a result of the man gulch fire in 49 when a group of people who had had their feet in the fire who understood fire what we'd call the old fire horse now you know they got their heads together chief of the forest service said we need some orders that people can follow that would help them be safe on the fire line and so these original orders came out and they were called the 10 standard orders and they began in a logical sequence i think of importance in the minds of the people who developed them and they said first we want to start with fire behavior because that's the enemy we want to know what the fire is going to do what the enemy is going to do and then they went to fire line safety because we want to keep our people safe from this analysis that we've made of the fire behavior and and plan our actions according to what we think is going to happen and then they said we need some organizational control so the last three orders dealt with organizational control and then they came up with that 10 standard order that in the fire orders has become the first order which everybody remembers no matter whether it's the 10 standard orders or the fire orders people remember fight fire aggressively but provide for safety first and and in the course of our conversation here i'd like to change that a little bit after we've gone through the three fire behavior safety and organizational management phases of things i'd like to tell you how i'd propose changing that last 10 standard order but the first of the standard orders dealt with fire weather and and it was stated like keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts now when we think of fire weather we always think well we've got a the meteorologist is going to provide that but the way that order was stated it said imperative not not stated but you keep informed on fire weather conditions look at that word conditions a minute the meteorologist is not going to give you those conditions that's something that you see that's the cumulus cloud that's building out there that you can observe that that's not observable that tells something about stability that's the use of that belt weather kit which tells you what the temperature but especially the relative humidity is doing in the area so these are observable things and the forecast keep informed on fire weather forecasts that's the responsibility of the meteorologist to make the forecast but it says you keep informed of the forecast it doesn't say the meteorologist the dispatcher or anybody else is got that responsibility you have that and so that that having having looked at the weather and the influence that that has you go then to the second order which says know what your fire is doing at all times observe personally you scout well that's pretty self-explanatory but it's a little hard to implement sometimes when a fire gets large and that's where some of the other orders come into play about communications and about lookouts and the likes so the third order then in again related to fire behavior but now we're talking about tactics we say base all action on current and expected behavior of the fire it's real important there now you can see how those work together when you think of fire weather and how in the morning humidity is high how in the afternoon it's going to go down so if your fire is sort of just smoking and smoldering around in the morning you expect that and then you expect some changes to take place in the afternoon as the humidity drops the temperatures rise and usually the winds go up so that's the first three orders dealing with fire behavior the next three orders deal with safety and the first and I might not get these in exactly the sequence they had them but that's not important the sequence isn't as important as the grouping when you think of fire safety maybe you think of escape routes right away so it says have escape routes for everyone and make them known just having escape routes by themselves doesn't do any good unless people know and so if you don't if you're one of the person that has to plan the escape route that's one thing you let people know if you're one of the persons who's going to use those escape routes and haven't planned it then you have to say hey where's our escape route so it's a two-way street all the time and that comes with communications and organizational control when we get to those three orders but then the next one says post a lookout when there's possible danger and that just means any kind of danger but of course the you know one of the primary dangers in firefighting is fire behavior now we've examined that so you post a lookout with those concerns that person might be taking the weather just you know just as a sidelight and that and the third one says be alert keep calm think clearly and act decisively hey that has a lot to do with safety but that's that's very difficult sometimes after a 24-hour shift to be alert keeping calm i think comes from the fact that you've already analyzed the fire behavior and so that helps to keep calm thinking clearly again refers back to what you've done and what you've documented and how as a group i don't care whether it's a two-person smoke chaser outfit jumpers well what we look at there is that you have some consistent way of of monitoring fire behavior so that being alert keeping calm thinking clearly and acting decisively comes as a methodology as much as anything else and that leads us to the the next three which deal with organizational control and we talk about maintaining uh communications maintain communications with your men your boss and adjoining forces it's important you know that have several ways to do this you can be innovative i know i know in other training courses you talk specifically about communication and now we're talking about organizational control in this 10 center orders then the next one we talk about is is maintaining control of your people at all times again going back again to the fire behavior first three you maintain that because you've analyzed the situation you're looking at and that gives confidence both in the people that you're supervising and yourself to say hey i can i can maintain control because we've done this analytically we've looked at this we know the situation and the next one there says uh and i have to glance down here to take a quick look is to give clear instructions and be sure they're understood now i know ted when you're thinking about instructions why you give clear instructions and i give clear instructions but are they understood now this is where the people have to feedback if i give an instruction to somebody and it's not clear they have to ask and and of course that prompts that communications it's just so important and then we come to the last of the 10 standard orders the original 10 standard orders which says fight fire aggressively but provide for safety first and here's the change that i would make in that ted i would say fight fire aggressively having provided for safety first having looked at the fire behavior and all those things around it having looked at your tactics and going down to your safety and then down to your organizational control leads to safe action on the fire and so that's kind of my spiel ted that's that's what i'd like to get across to people i think they'll find it a very valuable way of of staying out of trouble it's good to see that john's efforts to bring back the original grouping of the standard orders has paid off now let's talk about another useful tool in the irp g the 18 watch out situations there has been a lot of discussion and confusion around the use of the 18 watch out situations to look at this issue a little closer we're going to ask you to compare the 18 watch out situations to the 10 standard firefighting orders ask yourself is this situation of violation of a standard order and if so what do you need to do immediately to eliminate that hazard and be in compliance with the standard orders if it isn't isn't an immediate threat and what are the possible actions to mitigate the hazard let's get into your groups and complete exercise number two in your student workbook we hope you found that exercise interesting and greg goodall's solutions at least thought provoking now let's talk about another tool widely used in conjunction with the 10 and 18 it is very unfortunate but the fire community has recently lost one of its most valuable human resources paul gleason the originator of one of the most valuable tools offered up to the fire community lces recently passed away following a protracted battle with cancer paul was an incredible individual and he will be greatly missed by his friends family and the fire community we were fortunate enough to interview paul a couple of years ago talking about the principles behind lces let's take some time to hear from the late great paul gleason yeah yeah i was real fortunate in in the 1960s to work with some excellent excellent fire people and i guess i first started seeing them not as lces but i started seeing the practice by working with these firemen and it was right around the mid 80s i believe it was the winter of 1985 after doing some heavy fire fighting in Idaho with the with the crew i was getting even more so concerned about their safety you know 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 you know i'd memorize the fire orders and everything else but it seemed to me that i needed some a little bit simpler for me to to be with my crew to make sure the bases were covered in the the winter of 1985 what i did to to take a look at 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 and i took a pen and started circling keywords that came up in those reports and reflecting back on an active fire year i trying to see what made sense and and as it turned out i did this over a course of a saturday one one weekend as it turned out lookouts communications escape routes and safety zones are the words that kept on appearing time and time again at the same time i was studying mathematics and thinking about a systems approach to to things and so that had influence plus i was reading a mountaineering freedom of the hills where they talked about objective hazards being in a mountaineering environment as well as subjective hazards and it just lcs it kind of came from that one exercise on on saturday you know the intent is is 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 and word of mouth and then from those positions and escape route to a safety zone but to me a lookout you know needs to have their eye on on two things one is the crew location in the fire environment and just physically how how they're located and needs to be conscious of of that location as well as having the other eye on the objective hazard now when lcs first came out it was just for being overrun by fire but you know people are applying it to fallen snags and rolling rocks and in a lot of the objective hazards in the fire environment and i think that's appropriate and good but the lookout needs to have that kind of visibility needs needs to see the fire see the perimeter of the fire and see the objective hazard also to be conscious that it is a changing fire environment if that fire is starting to work its way over to the bottom of a chute to have enough fire behavior knowledge to anticipate what the change in the fire behavior is going to be you know those are are the two views the two visions that the lookout needs to have the second thing i think that's important about lookouts is because not only is the environment that we work in dynamic but but it also is vast spatially vasted over a large area that that one lookout isn't going to going to cut it in a lot of cases you need to have have people being maybe a number of people to where they they can see the overall fire environment and anticipate a negative change in it you know and that's what i think is critical of the lookout and not grabbing the the person that's not going to be producing the greatest amount of line but but to get somebody who's really tuned into fire behavior and and is aware of the consequences um you know i remember fires being on where we've had most of the crew over to uh over 10 people on the crew serving as lookouts while just a couple people did some work to tuck in a corner of of a hot section of fire um the communications part uh uh is communications initially at least initially when lcs was developed was the ability for the lookout or lookouts to communicate this change immediately to each and every firefighter and and that goes that goes through a process of there may be one radio to the crew boss or one radio to the overhead but then communication also is passing the word down the line that we have a spot fire below us and we need to to move back in a particular direction so that communication um to me initially in lcs was from the lookout to each and every firefighter and and it may have gone through radios a word of mouth or a lot of different ways but the important thing is is a that each and every firefighter gets a communication immediately uh it's uh i i see uh with lcs they're taking a lot broader look at communications and i i think that that's okay too uh you know to again another perspective then then the escape route to me that's that's one reason why and initially i on that saturday i went through through those fatality reports is a lot of times there was not a clear distinction on what was an escape route what was a safety zone so uh in in my own mind i needed to sort through that and and to think of those two independently but uh when lcs was put together the escape route was from the individual firefighters location and the path to the safety uh safety zone where where they could go ahead and take uh unanticipated change in the fire environment the fire run uh and be safe uh and then a battlement in in 1976 a battlement really uh stresses the need to have have at least uh two escape routes that's why in the in the traditional lcs uh there was lookout parentheses with an s in their communication parentheses with an s but escape routes always had an s at the end of it primarily because of battlement uh you know just just in case you're cut off uh and then things that are important in in that sense of course is is timing that it takes x amount of time to get from your location to the safety zone the other thing is is as a crew and and thinking not a structure protection but but of a hand crew uh building line as you build line the effectiveness of your escape route changes not only in distance to the safety zone but just fatigue you know ability to to use that escape route and then safety zone you know in a way that's the kind of place where you want to be able to sit with a pair of bermuda shorts a tall lemonade the real good camera the back on a chaise lounge and watch you all hell break out around you and be safe you know those those uh i don't know how many people that use the safety zones like that but but intentionally it's a place where you go away from radiant heat away from convective heat and and can exist an anticipated change in the fire environment if you knew it was going to blow up of course i you wouldn't engage in the tactic but but because of the the the way the wind shifts and and the way things unfold and unwind uh in the fire environment you know the lcs is is needed now let's go to a fire in Oregon where lcs played an important role in a hot shot superintendent's implementation of a tactical assignment so this was the last little piece that connected up the florence fire with the sour biscuit fire and this has been a real troublesome spot for us now for about four days this was one of the last key pieces to safely be able to hold the fire in this location before we started getting the fire underneath power lines down into the illinois valley where there are several thousand people so we needed to try to hold it up in this location there are four hot shot superintendents sitting right here talking about our options with this there was not a single superintendent that was interested in trying to go after this thing direct four days ago at three days ago we all met here with the branch director and operations to discuss what our options were and we basically came up with the three plans and the first plan was to go direct which wasn't viable not safe no safety zones poor escape routes and we didn't feel that our chance for success was very good three days ago the second option was to go with an indirect check line basically down these spur ridges where you can see the dose of line across the valley there where plan was to let the fire either back slowly to those check lines or to fire from the air to try to see if we can keep the fire from spreading any further to the to the east toward the illinois valley and then of course the third plan was to fall back on the original contingency which has fallen all the way back and burning out this basin that we're in which would have added another 10 000 acres to the size of the fire but then also brought it down closer to the structures and burning underneath a fairly large power line that supplies crescent city with power so we had eight heavy lift helicopters and our mod of dozers d8s d7s and some lighter cats to work the indirect lines we did not commit any people to this basin down here until we felt good with what that fire was doing so we had a fixed wing retardant lay in line of retardant from the north to the south that kept the fire in check and we followed that up with the eight heavy lift helicopters working non-stop for two days dropping water along that fire edge to keep it in check and two days ago yesterday morning we came back up looked at over our containment lines or our check lines here were pretty close to being in place and we were feeling a lot better about the opportunity to try to go direct the night crews came in and did establish a good anchor point from the west we're able to drag water along with them and direct attack strategy and with three or four hot shot crews at night they were able to get hand lines and dozer lines punched in a long ways out to where this area benches often starts to drop into whiskey creek where it gets real steep given that firsthand information please get back into your groups and complete exercise number three in your student workbook now let's go back to oregon and see how steve handled the situation yesterday morning we came out had a commitment of two or three heavy lift helicopters to to work with us as we came from anchor points on the top both sides where they started to bring the dozer line in i scouted an area down in through the black where i had a good safe access to get to the toe of the fire down in the bottom to see if we could safely put crews to work in the bottom of the whiskey creek drainage with the plan in mind to bring two crews in two hot-shot crews in to anchor the fire in the bottom of the drainage one crew working east one crew working west and that's what's going on today what we opted to do was walk back around to the top and drop down a spiny ridge that was solid nuked up black down to the very bottom to the toe of the fire with two crews and that's what we're doing we're going to do it right start from the bottom and flank our way back up to the top even though our progression was from the top down into it we reached the point where we couldn't do that safely with the heavy equipment and water backing us up didn't have the water backing us up we want to fall back to the basics get down the bottom of the fire and flank our way back up with good black right next to us real important consideration on this operation out here for us right now we have three lookouts posted for our section of the fire we have one lookout on the west side one on the east side and one right here so we're actually triangulating our viewpoints so we can see all areas that we're working not we can't see every single location from one lookout point so we have to do it with several different lookouts so we have three lookouts committed for the one area and we're feeling pretty good about that and have we have excellent communications and easy ways out to good black quickly if need be and now that we have covered the basic principles of the 10 standard firefighting orders the 18 watch out situations in lces we hope that you will use these tools on a continuous basis throughout each and every operational period working around dead trees or any hazard tree is very dangerous in the last two years two fatalities and numerous injuries were the result of falling trees to eliminate these tragedies each and every firefighter needs to be diligent in the identification and mitigation of this hazard environmental conditions that increase this snag hazard and hazard tree indicators are listed in your irp g under snag safety please refer to them as we listen to winston rawl he's a region six chainsaw training coordinator talk about this dangerous hazard well i think we need to to develop a an emphasis in the change of the attitude from snag to hazard tree and the concept that all the trees out there have the potential to become hazards to the firefighters and it's long been known in the timber industry that there are certain indicators that are exist in the forest before you ever get to your work area and the document a tree strikes and you're out outlines many of those conditions and things that we need to look for out there the spreadsheet i have is a couple years old and there's 22 fatalities from snags or trees listed there and 19 of those are from trees 10 inches and smaller in diameter at the stump so that's kind of you know the the the risk factor for the smaller trees is much higher than the risk factor for the larger trees because we have a tendency to stay away from those or bring somebody in to mitigate that hazard in mature stands of timber there are small saplings that grow up and uh they get choked out or otherwise the competition isn't there and then they die off and they may break off at the base at some important time lose their support and become leaners in the larger trees and as fire goes through the area these are very dry trees and it'll catch and start burning the base or the butt of this stem it's like a cigarette it continues to burn the downward pressure into the hot soil is enough with a little breeze to keep this burning and as they burn down they just keep dropping out of the tree until they're free of whatever holds them and then they fall well kind of an analogy for the velocity would be a major league baseball player when baseball bats down that home plate swing into bat you know none of us would want to be there when he swings that bat we wouldn't want to be impacted by that but a tree of about 20 feet in height and say six to ten inches at the base at the top is about the same size as that baseball bat well when it falls and comes out when it reaches head height it has about the same velocity as that baseball player swinging that bat so those are the kind of forces that develop when that happens but we seem to not be intimidated by these small trees and therefore we don't really look for that particular hazard the IAP in the morning says look out for snags and the immediate reaction of most people to snag is a big dead tree and so I think we need to move to where we recognize the smaller hazards the ones that are really hurting people and kind of identify that as as the real source the real danger to our people out there I think that probably the greatest lesson that I've noticed is that these the tree strikes that we've had on crew people have resulted in a tree that has been you know 30 to 40 feet even in some cases a hundred feet from where the work activity is taking place and I would say that if you get to an area that you need to work that get some people out there and grid that area and look if you have to look at the base of every tree do it and determine if there is a hazard out there because the very nature of the suppression work is heads down we're digging in the soil with tools and it's hard to look up and dig at the same time and as opposed to when you're falling you're looking up all the time you know your saw stays in the tree and it's easy kind of to look up and see what's going on but the people who are on the ground looking down to really protect them I think that you know we need to grid the area out and make sure that there's nothing outside our work area that's going to come into the work area and get employees that's probably the single most thing I can think of that would really help eliminate this hazard or the exposure exposing employees to this hazard. This photo here of an aspen laying on the ground was taken from the back side of the tree shortly after it fell five minutes earlier from out where the log is laying where the tree is laying people looked at this tree and it looked perfectly healthy as you can see there's not much burn on that side of the tree or on the ground around that side of the tree it had a real heavy green canopy and when it fell it resulted in a fatal incident and so it would be a condition where looking at this stand of gridding people out before we started to work we could have possibly detected this hazard and eliminated the fatality if you here in the morning message to look out for snags and you'd like to have a clarification of what kind of snags are we looking for what not and don't be afraid to ask but by the same token if if you're out in a division or something and you notice a particular condition or a particular thing that's happening with the trees feed that information back through the safety channels so that it can maybe be included in the next day's briefing trees can and will continue to fall in the woods it's up to us to make sure that no one is under them when they do and now let's look at a complex and hazardous situation that we seem to be facing more and more these days the wildland urban interface during the 2002 fire season more than 100,000 structures were threatened by wildfires and firefighters were successful at protecting 98 percent of them to review the hazards associated with the situation let's go to the Big Fish fire in Colorado this last year please refer to your student workbook as we go through this scenario on august 16th 2002 numerous vacation cabins were threatened by a fire approximately 40 miles west of meek of Colorado the fire was about 1500 acres and a fire use team was scheduled to take over the management of the fire at 0600 on august 17th it was burning in spruce subalpine fur fuel type among other things the incoming team had four major areas of concern the Rio Blanco ranch was north of the fire to the east was trappers lake lodge and resort which included 22 structures and numerous propane and fuel tanks also to the east was a single cabin heavily surrounded by trees and brush and several other private cabins on the edge of trappers lake most of these structures were occupied at the time of the fire our team was just back to this fire august 15th that evening we got the call august 16th was our travel day and most everyone got here by about 2100 on august 16th yeah local forest wanted us to take this fire over right away but due to our lack of knowledge or what was going on and unfamiliarity with the fire behavior and everything we declined that which was a good call and decided that we'd take fire over the following operational period and okay at our briefing on august 16th that evening we were told that grand junction fire weather had predicted cold front passage august 17th nearly afternoon they had predicted high winds low humidity's means index of six and more importantly the ERC was approaching the 98th centile and looking at our pocket cards that we were issued that afternoon from the local fire behavior people eat in immediately that we were in some unprecedented fire weather we planned accordingly at that point the resources that were signed to the fire were big horn regular IA crew person crew day one hot shock crew two fire use modules dion and saguaro modules and about 18 engines the primary objective for operations on august 17th was structure protection we had a real blanket ranch on the southern part of the valley and at the upper head edge of the drainage was trappers lake lodge and a privately owned cabin just south of there the weather forecast had predicted RHs in the single digits and high winds with the frontal passage fire behavior had predicted the the winds to increase about 1,100 and those would be from the west and we figured pretty much that they'd be funneling up the valley right into trappers lake lodge let's get into your groups and do exercise number four in your student workbook now let's go back to colorado and see what actually happened on august 17th with the predicted fire behavior or weather for the following day fire behavior predicted that basically we should be out of harm's way at 11 o'clock or start moving on harm's way by 11 and totally out of harm's way basically up valley by noon we got up there after briefing about nine o'clock by the time we got all our equipment and supplies and immediately pulled out the structure protection plan and assigned the engines to start setting up sprinklers and to lay in holes unfortunately we only had two pumps so one pump was used on the single lodge or single cabin and sprinklers were set up the other pump was put at the the trappers lake lodge which had 22 structures which included two tanks each tank containing 1,400 gallons of gas and 1,400 gallons of diesel and a 2,000 gallon propane tank in our plan for august 17th we specifically stated that everyone was going to start pulling out by 11 o'clock based on predicted weather and fire behavior when we got up to 11 o'clock even though everyone felt that they could safely continue to operate we kept with the plan even though forecasted weather predicted the winds to pick up at 11 which they did they could have picked up a lot quicker than normal so we went with plan and by 1130 even though we did not have total structure protection done we pulled everyone out and they were on their way down the road by 1130 and into a pre-determined safety zone on august 17th the fire as predicted began major fire runs at approximately 12 o'clock the fire moved east and funneled right through the trappers lake lodge and resort destroying nine of the 22 structures including the main lodge all fire personnel and civilians were safely in the designated safety zones there was one single cabin off by itself that several weeks ago was written off during structure protection planning basically because the amount of trees and around the cabin we sent two engines in with one pump and six sprinkler heads and they took three hours to remove some hazard fuels along with the owners of the cabin and at the pre-determined time of 11 o'clock we pulled them out we had set up the sprinkler system started running and miraculously that cabin survived although the fire activity slowed down slightly by the morning of the 19th a second major run was being predicted for that afternoon near the private cabins adjacent to trappers lake rick barton was the safety officer assigned to that area let's hear some of the conditions surrounding his situation prior to the operational briefing it's august 19th and the fire had been burning for over a month crawling around creeping around doing its thing and then a few days earlier it made a spectacular run and taken out some cabins in a lodge about five six miles up this road so we were kind of on the edge being very careful we were concerned our relative humidities were in the teams recovery at night was only 19 percent so things were getting drier and hotter the meteorologists had told us that we had thunderstorms forecasted they were going to move into the area dry thunderstorms with a company in high wind on august 19th we had have to check my notes here but we had approximately five engines ranging from type ones to type sixes okay we had two hot shot crews we had a couple more type two crews we had two helicopters two light helicopters with buckets and that's primarily the resources that we had on steam now let's get into your groups and do part two of exercise four in your student workbook welcome back let's go back to colorado now and hear what happened to reverend rick and his resources we had gone to these cabins particularly on the end the forest wilderness boundary comes right down to a fence line about 20 feet past these cabins so we had wrapped the closest two cabins to the wilderness area with the protective wrapping which is like the fire shelter material with positioned sprinklers all around the cabins in that area in fact all through these cabins we had hose lays set up we had engines pre-positioned all through these cabins as well as we anticipated the fire moving this direction the firehead began to come over the top of this ridge and was spotting downhill it was moving rather slowly just kind of crawling around skunking around doing what we wanted to do really getting a lot of the bug kill and blow down in there and so things were were looking pretty good but when the weather forecaster told us that we were anticipating high winds we decided the previous afternoon in fact to get all the lodge employees together all the civilians together and develop an evacuation plan the other safety officer and I met with them and determined that if things started going apart on us coming apart on us we would ring the bell at the main lodge here which everyone heard for mealtimes and such would ring the bell and they would all gather in front of the lodge and then we would escort them down to a large meadow open meadow which we determined as a safety zone near the heliport we were actually viewing in our command and general staffing at noon that plan to be sure everything was in place when the first microburst hit we had high winds immediately the fire behavior changed substantially almost in about a 30 seconds we began to see huge columns of smoke we began to see the fire begin to build and crown and come downhill towards us towards the cabins all right so now we have the the protecting layers around these cabins we have the sprinklers in place we have the engines watering down everything but this fire starts to move towards it we immediately back everybody can get them out of the area all the employees and civilians while the engine folks stay on scene the primary objective of course in any fire scenario is firefighter and public safety and so that's why we get determined our evacuation plan we determined our safety zone we've moved the civilian folks into their first but all the firefighting personnel as well knew exactly where to go when we gave the signal that was our number one priority number two priority then was to keep the fire inside of the wilderness and not let it come onto private land not let it destroy the cabins on the private land and so that was our number two priority keep it on in the wilderness area which as I said was only 20 feet away from the closest cabin we had firefighters interspersed all through the private property because that column would lay over the camp and was dropping embers and even though we had sprinklers going an engine preposition we had firefighters gritting because as that column would lay over if we knew we were picking up spots I mean spots on the hillside a half mile away we knew we had to have spots within the camp itself some of the things we were concerned about primarily as we are in an interface situation like this of course you have the civilian folks and so we briefed our people as well as them on how to help get the civilians down to the safety zone and I had people preposition down there the helitex foreman manager there helicopter and others to organize these civilian folks when they got down there so that we could take care of them safely because that was our first concern secondly of course we go over all the things the lces that we always hit the lookouts we had lookouts posted on the roads above here looking for spots looking for things that we couldn't see we had communication we had everyone tuned in on and dialed in on what channels we're going to talk to what we were going to do if things started to come apart on this which which they did how we were going to respond how we're going to pull folks out you know in the back of your incident management response pocket guy here you know just some things to look over the briefing checklist make sure that we knew who was going to pull the plug we had determined you know it wasn't the the director of the camp here but it was going to be our operations chief was going to make that call along with with the safety officers that we were going to pull the plug so we had lookouts we had communications on escape routes we had debated on whether to let people drive to the safety zone or not we said not to we didn't want people walking and driving at the same time down a narrow road it's only about 150 yards down to our safety area so we had people walking down there in a group our escape route was identified we did have some trouble later on that we did exactly three times the camp the second or third time people were starting to get a little lozzy fare about it they were kind of saying well some of the civilians folks I think I don't need to go with everybody else I think I'll sit here and take pictures or this that and the other so we had to people pre-identified to sweep the area and make sure that all the civilians were out of danger and back to the safety we had preached our folks to some extent particularly overhead folks of you know if we do have a cabin involved if we do get flames inside of the cabin how to pull everybody back we're not structure firefighters we're not doing that so yeah we would go over the parts of the of the handbook that would address that with those folks and just reminding each other you know here's our task here and here's what we don't do as well as what we do do we felt that was important and again the more information the more briefing we gave people before it happened then when it actually happened there was really no panic no running around wondering what to do everybody pretty much had a had a handle on it good planning and cooperation led to the successful protection of all the threatened structures during the august 19th fire runs it is our hope that after this training you will take the time on your home units to identify the areas where the hazards associated with the wildland urban interface present themselves and schedule time to facilitate some pre-planning with local residents and cooperators also remember as they did on the big fish fire that although the sense of urgency seems to elevate in a wildland urban interface situation the number one priority is the safety of human life now let's talk about a subject that's been rightfully gaining notoriety throughout the fire community leadership is one of the most important components of safe fire operations let's talk to one of those people who is responsible for promoting this topic into our daily operations and introducing it into our training curriculum have you ever used one of these for training yet well you probably will have an opportunity to do so in the near future this is a sand table and the concept is not really new in the fire service but it's become rejuvenated over the last couple of years through some of the work that an interagency group has done with the marine corps university in quantico virginia the marines who have access to quite a bit of high tech training software and hardware choose to use this particular training technique to teach some of their junior leaders how to be leaders and give them opportunities to practice some of the leadership concepts and practices that are needed for example communication and tactics are some things that they teach quite a bit with sand tables it's a way to do a quick simulation without spending a lot of money and give you some repetitions in decision making while nobody's actually at risk this is just one of the leadership development initiatives that have been undertaken by an interagency group of wildland firefighters who have been working with the marine corps university and with other organizations both in academia the private sector and the military to try to develop more of a leadership development program for wildland fire in the past the wildland fire service has focused to a great extent on the physical side of firefighting and we've only recently realized that we really neglected the human side of firefighting and the understanding of that that leads to better leadership and better communication and safer fire operations so the best way to find out about some of these leadership development initiatives is to visit the website www.fireleadership.gov there's a great deal of information there about the different leadership initiatives everything from the formal leadership courses in the curriculum that have either been developed or under development right now to the leadership tool box which is a group of self-study tools that you can use to improve your knowledge and practice of leadership and to learn more about fire in general the history of fire and how how leaders operate in high-risk environments we have a self-study professional reading list there with a great number of books to read on the subject of leadership and fire we also have a staff ride guide for people wishing to do that sort of thing we have the sand table exercise and tactical decision guide we also have SOP guide for people developing those for at the crew level so there's a great deal of information there I urge you to visit that become familiar with it and then use it to enhance what you're doing on your own crew or at your own local unit part of good leadership is identifying and monitoring situations that could lead to injuries or fatalities and initiating corrective action and although the corrective action should take place on the spot it's very important that a reporting system be in place to track unsafe situations for trend analysis and for policy revisions fortunately we have such a reporting system for fire line operations it's called safe net safe net is very similar to the aviation community's anonymous reporting system called safe com and it's very easy to use to help us better understand the use and importance of this system we talked to John Gould a veteran smoke jumper and currently the BIA national fire and aviation safety specialist he is also on the health and safety working team who facilitates this program well safe net originated as a as a recommendation from the tri data study after the fatalities at south canyon and i think the tri data corporation looked around at other high-risk industries in in the nation and around the world and looked for commonalities in those in those high-risk industries and and what their safety systems were doing and they all had reporting systems i think reporting systems in aviation are very common you know within fire aviation we've got safe com but all throughout aviation they have them and most high-risk industries have a reporting system for their employees for accident prevention they just want to they want to get to the source before it happens so it's our intent that all problems should be taken care of at the time they're they're seen in the field so if you see it a safety violation by no means are we saying sit back and fill out a safe net and expect somebody else to take care of it it is incumbent upon every firefighter out there to take care of those problems themselves and that's where it should be taken care of that being said we'd like to have it documented too once they take care of the problem send the safe net in and say here was the problem and here's how i took care of it and you know we have the information we need it goes into the database we can see the trends and the corrective actions right there now we know that that always can't happen some problems you can't solve on the field are you know at the field level and they need to be elevated to another level and safe net is a way that we can start with that process when it comes to Boise we will take that and send it back out into the field at the level we think is appropriate for it to be taken care of so maybe if we send it to an fmo that fmo might say no i'll give this to my engine captain and it's appropriate for him to take care of maybe it goes to a type one team safety officer or an ic but wherever it goes we'll get it there we'll we'll address that problem and we'll start it down the line and we'll dog it and till we see that the corrective action we feel as appropriate is taken we need it to become part of the culture we need firefighters to understand that that that they need a voice that they need to report what's happening out there and so i think last year we had probably 120 and it was one of the biggest fire seasons that we've ever had so 120 people calling in saying they've had a problem or writing in to say they've had a problem is not a huge response but it's growing you know but i worry personally when i see a fire like the biscuit fire where you know we had uh six thousand firefighters you know uh half the firefighters in the uh in the western world were on that fire and we got five or six uh safe nets back from the biscuit fire now i know things weren't going all that great out there we had problems but where do we as as uh managers where do we go to look for what those problems were and where's it documented and that's what is great about safe net is that ground firefighters document what those problems are they can get a response they can get that problem solved but they can also document it and help us you know see where the trends are and where we should go when we're changing our policies here and that is what i really would like to get out of out of safe net something that would help us manage our manage our policy well we try to make it as simple as possible you know and it really is a no-brainer to fill out a safe net we've gotten paper forms that are self-addressed and business reply mail stamped so and they're on right in the rain paper and we hope that firefighters are taking those carrying them in their pg bag if they have a problem they can just fill it out and drop it in the closest mailbox and you know i know that if you're in the middle of the bob marshal wilderness the closest mailbox might be a ways away but keep it and drop it off when you get back in town you can also file one online and it's a web address that you can get to through the nifty website it's real visible safe net is it's a link that's on there easy to find on the nifty safety page and then also we have an 800 number that is listed on every paper form and on our website so if you want to file one by phone you can do that as well oh the repercussions and not filing are the status quo things continue on as they always have been you know maybe we need change changes in how we train up our our division supervisors maybe our strike team leaders you know maybe maybe there's problems that are inherent with the way we hook up buckets on helicopters all those things you know that that uh that we feel there might be a problem out there if we don't report it we've got the status quo and right now i don't think the status quo is serving us very well safe net is a good system designed with the health and safety of every firefighter in mind but it is only effective if it is used trend analysis and policy revisions affect you directly so let's help build a good database by diligently filling out safe nets whenever you have a safety concern and now let's move on to another aspect of fire operations using fire to fight fire many burnout operations have proven to be very effective at controlling wild fires but this tactic does not come without risks a typical burnout situation occurred this last year on the johnson fire in utah let's think about burnout operations and hear from jim ashley the division group supervisor on this fire as he sets up the scenario basically uh as of last night or yesterday afternoon in division bravo off here to the to the north this fire has been more active at night and burning downhill at night and it's and we were getting shifting winds yesterday and therefore a lot of spotting over the dozer line outside of division bravo we managed to catch the the spots yesterday afternoon with the quick turnaround time with a type two and a type one helicopter and at towards end of shift they actually did a burnout and brought it all the way down division being into the meadow that you can see here with the engines and they held off there and the main objective was to stop the spotting in the afternoon over the dozer line to the north and we had about 75 to 100 acres here of spruce fir and basically we just started it we gave a good briefing this morning we've got some crews on on both the the northeast side and the southeast side of the the burnout operation so with good coordination and the good briefing that we did here at eq one this morning and basically used engines and one crew here and about three igniters out here to do the do the burning itself in the morning uh briefing we go over the fire weather and the fire behavior forecast uh chance of some afternoon thunderstorms this afternoon around the fire area uh hanes index of five winds uh today are predicted out of the southwest unless uh thunderstorms overhead then erratic gusting up to 40 miles per hour um r h is uh predicted 35 to 40 percent but as last night during the burnout at 8 30 we were getting r h is down to 17 percent uh so you know we're doing a lot of on-site weather making sure we're keeping up to date to that ourselves as far as uh fire behavior uh most of the fire behaviors been at night uh with the downslope winds and the fire's been making good runs downhill at night uh in the uh mornings afternoons uh kind of like you guys seen today um get some heat generated in the interior get a good stringer a timber torch and basically run to the ridge tops we've got two type six engines um we've got the uh two shot crews up on top and uh we've got two type two crews working down here on the bottom we actually only had two type six engines uh two overhead and uh one type two crew to do the burnout here and then we've got some type four engines a couple other crews over in division robbo just in case something did go wrong and then they're watching the burnout that they did last night now let's get into our groups and do exercise number five in your student workbook welcome back now let's go back to Utah and find out how that operation went now as far as as so far with the burnout operation that we completed today um everything's gone good you can see the winds are shifting a little now to out more out of the north and west and that's going to be pushing some smoke across the lineup on the top end hopefully we've got enough folks up there in place to take care that we do oh i don't know probably six thousand foot of hose up there with lateral so all that's in place and you know this if we don't get any spots over here in division alpha this is certainly going to save us a lot of headache over in division bravo uh the uh weather forecast is supposed to be hotter and drier for the next few days so we wanted to get this taken care of this morning we've got good safety zone for all the folks that we're here doing the holding uh the folks over in division bravo they were aware you know if anything did start rolling that way they're escape route out to the meadow safety zone in the meadow and then we've got some shock crews on up higher they've got some good rock outcroppings up there for safety zone so basically the main thing for safety concerns were for the ignition crew and as we were coming through if something went wrong or somebody got disoriented you know that that was the main thing that we covered there so we had you know everybody that was out there on ignition had a radio was on the tactical frequency and good communications at all times please remember that burnout operations need to be carefully planned and executed the risk management process found in your irp g is an excellent reference to consult during these operations and now that we are almost done with this portion of your training today let's talk about after action reviews for years we have been reviewing our operations through the use of post-fire critiques nowadays we have formalized this process by including in the irp g a section on after action reviews or aars to get you acquainted with this process we're going to have you run through your own aar for this training course this will also serve as our course evaluation so we hope to get some valuable information from you for future refresher videos we hope this will get you acquainted with the process and that you will continue to use it out on the fire line so at this time please work with your local facilitator and complete the aar found in your student workbook now that you are familiar with the aar process we hope this will facilitate the learning of something new on each and every fire assignment it shouldn't take a tragedy to make us stop and evaluate the way we do business every fire assignment has lessons waiting to be learned aars are a worthwhile use of our time and we urge you to take advantage of them and that about does it for this section of your training today but before we depart let's hear some closing comments from some of the guests involved with this program um certainly i think using the pocket response guide to help uh you know refuse an assignment is a good way to go that gets people on the right track there's nothing wrong with refusing an assignment and it doesn't necessarily mean that the tactical planning was wrong all it means is that there's you know you need to review the options and see that there's there may be a resource that's capable of doing that because of experience or there may be a safer way to do it but it gets everybody back to a point where they're all talking about what the mission is and how it can be done safely rather than blindly charging off to send people down into a hole down into a canyon which is you know firefighters sometimes like to do we're out here to try to get the job done and you got to remember that the key thing is to get the job done safely you know keep your eyes open suspect everything as a hazard until you know that it's not for you crew bosses develop procedures to uh grid areas to identify hazards flagging procedures if you don't have the ability to take care of them yourself you may want to create a no work zone in some areas and uh just generally look out for the employees because we want everybody to come home the same way they came to work in the morning my my thing these days is that people are sure that they're in control of the i like to call it operational tempo in other words they are able to keep up with the pace of things as they happen and if they're unable to keep up with the pace of things as they happen then they need to stop for a minute and figure out why it only takes a second it might just be a matter of referring to a checklist the risk management checklist or the briefing checklist or something but i think it's important for people to be in control of the pace of things that is happening to them and i think that with refresher training you're given those tools to do that as long as you pay attention and stay diligent about following all the guidelines and tools that you're given as a firefighter to use safe operation on the fire ground your personal safety and the safety of your crew all depends on you in my darkest moments i think about whether or not someone had had a box of these snap flares with them on this fire had 20 or 30 of these been along the edge of that road a road that was only 27 inches wider than the wheel base of the truck i wonder if we would have suffered this tragic accident no one in overhead no one in management can go out there on the fire line that's where you are and that's where you as a firefighter have to protect yourself your colleagues your brother and sister firefighters and for heaven's sakes please protect your families by coming back alive we hope that your group discussions and review of the scenarios will help you identify and mitigate the numerous hazards that are sure to present themselves to you during this upcoming fire season remember it's up to you to keep yourself safe and out of harm's way despite the fact that we say there's nothing out there worth of human life we have yet to see a fire season free from fire shelter deployments or fatalities for this reason we still have one more thing to cover your local facilitator will run you through the proper inspection techniques and the deployment of your fire shelters we want to thank you very much for your attention we at the BLM training unit want to wish you a safe and enjoyable fire season remember to stay alert expect the unexpected and keep yourself out of harm's way again it concerns me when when people think we have it all sorted out and and figured out and well i guess i'm saying is directly to the people watching watching this video here is that you're gaining experience you know every time you go out on a fire line you're gaining experience and you're gaining a your own vision your own perception of of fire and how to how to work safely around it and i i hope people don't believe that we have it all figured out but that we need to continue continually have people take a look at it and trying to tell us their perception of it you know what's going to going to make it safer and these things all work together the fire orders the 18 situations that shall watch out downhill the line construction guidelines all these things work together and by no means do we have it all figured out and i encourage people especially after the they start to gain experience is turn around and pay up it's your time to to give back to the the fire community what you've learned and and what you've learned through your own vision and don't don't accept just that the fire orders are going to cover it or the 18s are going to cover it but it'd be encouraged to keep taking a look at safety and firefighter safety and the dynamic environment and and to try to make it better