 Hello again. Well we hope you had a lively discussion and identified some key urban interface issues in your area. Now if you'll turn to page 7 in your student workbook, we can move on to our next topic, which is downhill and indirect line construction. You'll find a downhill line construction checklist on page 7 of your incident response pocket guide and on page 7 in your student workbook. Downhill and indirect line construction is inherently dangerous. No matter how hard we try to avoid it, we often seem to find ourselves in this situation. Let's hear what the field has to say on this. Constructing downhill line is something that we do a lot of as smoke jumpers and a lot of other people do it just because any time you get to it from the air you're going to be dropped off on top and sometimes even on an engine it'll come up on top. The things that you have to consider is number one, where are you going to start? Are you starting in green fuel cutting towards black? If so, you better sit back and you better think of a pretty good plan because that's not an anchor point and when the fire does if and when the fire does get up and go, it's going to get raced up to the top of the mountain and if you don't have real close safety zones, your escape route, it's a hard one because your escape route generally is always going to be uphill and you work and you work and you work and all of a sudden you look back up the hill and it's way up there and you know that you wouldn't make it if you had to. So things that I think about when I'm looking downhill at a piece of line that I need to construct is are there safety zones all the way down? Can I anchor in somewhere up here that I can make sure that it's not going to get around me? Rolling debris, you better have a look out every single time just for the fact of rolling debris or you can't see what's going on at the very bottom. You know that's happened in a lot of tragic fires, exactly that and you couldn't see what was going on and before it was too late you're too far down the hill and here come the fire. And like I said, always have those checks and balances and constant monitoring. You got to monitor, monitor, monitor. Don't say okay we've done it and then stay with that same plan. Things are going to change, fire is going to change, weather is going to change, you better adapt and change with it. If it starts getting to the point where you're not going to be able to do it, you get out and that's what I base my downhill line construction on as far as safety. I think one of my biggest concerns of downhill line construction is the fire behavior. What's the fire doing? Is the fire creeping around in light fuels that's going to provide a safe, you know, area for me to construct hand line directly against against the fire line of one foot in the black. However, sometimes you know you put in areas where there's sage, you know, some pinion juniper that's not going to provide that. I believe downhill line construction is taken on an independent basis on the fire, the expected fire behavior, what the weather is doing. And you also have to do the risk to reward. You know, what's it going to accomplish if I dig fire line downhill? You know, if it's going to save five acres of grass and sage, can I go to the next ridge, burn it off and call it a day? Necessarily, you know, do I want to put my crew in that big of situation where myself is going to be headliable if something goes wrong? A whole bunch of factors play into that. You know, there's so many ways of doing it. You can dig line downhill and burn with your line. You know, as you go, you know, establish good lookouts no matter what, whatever you're doing, just so you can see what's going down there. And as a crew member or crew boss, I should say you should probably go down there, you know, leave your crew with another crew boss or squad boss, someone you feel safe with. Go down there and check on the situation yourself so you can see with your own two eyes what is going on down there or beside you or whatever. So, you know, something maybe isn't spotting over or hooking or something. So, you can just step in the black or make a run for the ridge if the black happens to be a dirty burn. But it all goes down to a situation. If it's a dirty burn, you don't want to do it. You can decline. But it just depends on the situation. Those are some interesting comments. In this section, we're going to just throw you right in the middle of it with an exercise. On page 13, you'll find the details of your downhill, indirect, line construction exercise. Now let's go to Lamar who's going to help us set this up. Lamar? Yeah, Ted, this was a great fire. It was located on Elko District, Elko, Nevada. It was located. Time frame was around late August, really hot. I think the book actually does a great job of setting it up. And if you don't mind, we can go straight to tape. This fire was a result of a weather system that passed through the night before. It was burning sage, juniper, and moderate terrain. We arrived on the fire around 0900. We were met by the IC3 that informed us of the current situation and resources. The fire had been broken into two divisions. We were assigned to Division A along with two Nevada Department of Forestry crews and two Type 6 engines. There was a section of line between two roles that needed to be tied together. The problem with this division was that the fire was bagging over a ridge and at the bottom of that ridge was a drainage that led to a ranch and small community. On a positive note, there was an old road system that ran along the east side of the ridge and then turned west along the bottom of the ridge. This road tied into a well-used road that ran along the top west side of the ridge. It was decided that we would utilize this existing road by clearing it and burning out as we went along. The concern with this plan was that most of it would be downhill line construction with up canyon winds 10 to 15 mile per hour. We discussed this at length at our initial briefing. After tying into the road on top, but before we started our downhill assignment, we met with the strike team leader, safety officer, and we reassessed our situation and decided that three lookouts would be needed. The division suit would act as one lookout on the east side of the ridge. The safety officer would be on the top of the northwest side of the ridge and the assistance supervisor of the Jackson Hot Shots would be located on the top of the east side road. At around 1130 after re-securing the two roads at the northeast corner, we started working downhill on the east line. The winds were still up canyon out of the west. We were expecting help from the dozer that was walking in to support our operation. As we worked down the line, we brought a fire along with us. The Nevada Department of Forestry crews were spread out along the line and holding. At around 1300, the dozer showed up. It reinforced our line and took the lead. I stayed with the dozer the rest of the afternoon. The crew continued to burn out, secure, and patrol behind the dozer. At 1415, there was a spot fire across the line. All three lookouts reported at about the same time and the two Nevada Department of Forestry crews got right on it and caught it before it spread. The dozer backtracked to the spot fire to reinforce the line around it and then continued down the line. By 1530, the dozer had turned the corner and was heading up canyon. The crew continued to improve line and burn out, but held up for a while at point B until the dozer pushed past the head of the fire. Although the dozer was constructed an adequate line, the increased fire activity made holding this corner very difficult. Okay, remember your assignment is on page 13. At this point, you should work with your facilitator on Lamar's downhill indirect line construction exercise. Put yourself in Lamar's shoes and let's see how you do. Good luck.