 Okay, here's the situation. You're responding to a call in your community. There's an intense wildland fire spreading towards the neighborhood. As you arrive, things are happening quickly. A task force is assembling. Maybe they're career firefighters, maybe volunteers. Everyone huddles ready for action. All they need to get going is a safe strategy and access to water. We're going to put up a portable pump there for a fill station and this is going to be your only other fill station. You've got a good water plan in place. It worked well a month ago when you put out a house fire and the month before that with a small brush fire. But this time, things are different. You've never faced a wildland fire like this before, not even close. Fire brands will soon be dropping. Spot fires appearing. You'll be dealing with multiple exposures and a lot more fire than your water resources can put out. So what do you do now? Good question. It's just the wrong time to ask it. No doubt your fire department has an area water plan. You may not have fire hydrants like in the city, but you do have a few engines and a water tender. If a home or a business catches on fire, you know where to get your water, how to transport it and how to use it to extinguish the fire. For example, let's say that this is your town. If you have a stationary burning structure over here, you'd transport your water from, say, here. But what happens when you have an intense wildland incident like this one? Instead of a single burning structure, you've got a rapidly moving line of fire. And before long, as spot fires appear, you'll also have multiple ignitions to deal with. Your point-to-point water strategy suddenly goes out the window. Rather than saving one structure, you're trying to protect a whole neighborhood of structures. You now have a new water logistics problem on your hands. So with limited equipment and a small crew, how do you possibly transport water and hose lays to all of these structures? The answer is you don't. Let's go back to our opening scenario. Okay, what I'd like to do is deploy the Forest Service 2 engines and the DNRC engine. As you recall, your task force is ready to move into action. You've assessed the situation, the fire over the ridge is uncontrollable, and you've got more structures than resources. So it's time to shift from an offensive strategy to a defensive one. What does that mean? It means that instead of trying to stop the fire, you're going to do your best to prepare these homes so that they'll withstand it. Then, just before the fire arrives, you're going to move to your safety zone and let the fire pass through. You'll then return as soon as it's safe to mop up or overhaul any structure starts or spot fires that threaten structures. The key is to stay mobile at all times. Be smart and creative and react quickly as the situation changes. The results of this strategy may surprise you. You could wind up needing a lot less water than you'd expect. And if your homeowners have applied fire-wise principles, you'll use even less water. Okay, so you send your engines or tenders off to the stream to get water. At the same time, you split your crew into teams and direct them to locate structures. The first step, before anyone squirts a drop of water, is to know which structures can be effectively protected. And that will depend upon how well these residents have prepared their homes. So you triage the homes for extreme conditions. Your teams apply their knowledge of fire behavior and the ignition potential of these structures. Again, you mentioned the deck will get that cleaned off, sweep all the needles off of there. Then you'll determine the level of protection that each one will need and balance the needs of the entire neighborhood against the resources available to you. That may mean having to make some tough decisions. If you decide that a group of homes will consume too many resources, you may have to leave them unprotected. Time and water are limited. You can't afford to waste either. A home or community built with fire-wise principles in mind could resist ignition without assistance. For example, spraying water on a fire-resistant roof would waste resources and time. The way the property is maintained can also mean the difference between success and failure. A resident can help avoid disaster by practicing fire-wise maintenance, such as removing these pine needles on the roof and in the gutters. And these fine fuels could easily be ignited by firebrands or carry a surface fire that would jeopardize the home. As you can see, there are also some heavier fuels near the house. And don't overlook this wood pile over here. The assessment, with enough time to prepare these vulnerable areas, this home has a decent shot of surviving the fire. OK, so how do you prepare a structure? Your gut instinct may be to charge the hose line and drench the home and yard, but that would waste water and time. You'd probably deplete your water supply and leave the rest of the neighborhood unprotected. Instead, consider this thought. Sometimes your most efficient use of water involves not using water. Just ask Lee Buller of the Creston Montana Fire Department. In doing mitigation, we try and go in and limit the use of water to start with and try and remove the brush and debris away from the house and off of the house. What we look for is the proximity of the vegetation to the structure. If we're dealing with a lot of vegetation within a 30-foot buffer zone, we want to try and thin that down as best we can, as quick as we can, depending on the rate of spread of the fire. We don't have to clear everything out, but we want to try and get good separation in the tree canopy, 15, 20 feet. So maybe every other tree is something we might want to thin out of the location. If there's a lot of debris in the gutters, in the gutter strain system, or up on the house, we'll try and remove those. If it's easier to just take the gutter down, sometimes that's very feasible, and especially with like plastic or vinyl gutters, they have a chance to catch on fire and be the ignition source of the house. If they have a bunch of lawn furniture or stuff sitting on the deck, we'll take and remove that from the house and get it away. That kind of stuff catches a lot of embers, and we try and do this all before the fire comes, and that way we'll have our water available to use as if it does start burning, we'll be able to use that water to put that out. By removing some flammable vegetation, you'll both eliminate fuel and save your water for other uses. But this tactic only goes so far. You'll need water to wet dry vegetation in the yard and vulnerable parts of the house. Which means bringing out the big guns and soaking everything, right? Probably not. A heavy stream works well to extinguish structural fires, but in our situation, it would deliver too much water to too small an area. Not only would it be overkill, it would defeat our need to stay mobile. Imagine having to move these hoses from structure to structure, it'd take forever. You'd exhaust your crew. Plus, you'd waste water every time you disconnected and recharged. Instead, you want to use a smaller hose, something like this. The homeowner's garden hose, with its ready-made supply of water. If they've got a garden hose or a spigot outside, we'll try and use that water to wash off the deck or the roof of the pine needles and try and just use their water instead of using the water that's in the truck. I can put that garden hose into my booster tank to recover what water I'm using, so I'll still have as close to a full tank supply of my engine. And as the fire approaches, that's when I stop using my water very sparingly. As I get ignition, I try and get extinguishment. If it keeps you from having to go to the dump tank one time and you're able to stay there, it just helps you prolong your time before you have to leave that house to go get more water or have more people bring you water. Every little bit helps, so anytime you can save water, you try and look for that. Remember, we're thinking on our feet and staying mobile. A small hose with a spray nozzle works well on these fine fuels. You'll wet down a larger area faster than you would with a straight stream while consuming less water. You don't need to drench the entire yard or any green moist areas. Rather, you want to raise the moisture level of the dry, fine fuels next to the home. Now when it comes to dealing with heavy fuels, you'll have to alter your tactics a little. Structures, trees, and fences will all require more water than light fuels and thus will take longer to moisten. If the fire approach is imminent, wet the side of the structure that will take the radiant heat exposure and then spray any vulnerable places such as the flammable inside corners and under decks. Some fire departments are adding a new piece of equipment for heavy fuel exposures, portable sprinklers. The nice thing about sprinklers is you don't have to be there when the fire comes through. You're able to back off and leave that sprinkler in there. You're still applying the water as long as that water source is available. You're able to set up a bunch of sprinklers, treat a lot more area at the same amount of time, continuously treating the areas, whereas one person bumping from a nozzle to a nozzle is going to take a lot longer to treat that same area. And sprinklers don't always get into vulnerable nooks and crannies, so you'll need a hose to finish the job. Homeowners can play a role here too, by using their own sprinklers to raise the moisture level in the area, long before the fire arrives. Now, you may be wondering how additives to water such as foam and gels fit in. Well, foam can make your water go a lot further. In fact, it can reduce water usage by as much as two-thirds. Foam can also be very effective at covering vulnerable nooks and crannies and fine fuels. But it'll only last up to an hour, and it doesn't apply well in high winds. I'd recommend using the ones rated Class A. They're biodegradable, and homeowners can wash them off fairly easily. Now gels, they stick well to vertical surfaces and provide good radiant heat protection. Using gels over plain water buys you a lot of time. If you put water on a house, it'll dry off and be gone. Even after the gel dries, it still does you a lot of good on the house, and a lot of times you'll have time to come back and pre-treat the house, just wet that gel down a little bit. However, gels are more expensive and require mixers and special nozzles. They can also leave a residue that is difficult to remove. Whether you're using additives or water, or dealing with light or heavy fuels, your tactics remain the same. You want the water or additives to soak in, not run off. Okay, we've talked about applying water. Now what about accessing and delivering water? First of all, don't overlook any potential domestic sources. Many homeowners today have water tanks on their property. Some have swimming pools, and many subdivisions contain cisterns. Tap into these sources with a pump and preserve your own water resources for later. Now, getting back to our scenario, as you'll recall, we sent the apparatus to a nearby stream to fill up. As they return, what do you do with them? Remember, your apparatus is limited. You can't deliver water to every structure. So consider having your tenders dump their water in portable tanks. That will free them up to head back and refill. So where do you set up these portable tanks? You might dedicate one to a single structure with a portable pump, just as you would during a structural fire. You might also place another as a quick fill source at a road junction. That way, engines can refill without going all the way back to the pond. The key is to think strategically about your resources. First, identify several water sources. If one gets cut off by the fire, you'll have a plan B or C to fall back on. Second, make sure your resources and equipment aren't in the path of the flames. That way, they'll be protected when the fire front burns through. And third, protect any bridges or infrastructure that link you to your resources or serve as an escape route so you won't get cut off. Now, we haven't talked about hydrants, our scenario assumed we didn't have any. What if your town does? You'll use them differently during a wildfire. You won't hook up your engine and pump as you do with structural fires. Think about it. If the fire suddenly flared up and you had to escape, you'd have to stop and detach your hoses first. Some departments have lost equipment and injured firefighters simply because they didn't have time to detach. Instead, use your hydrants as a place to fill your apparatus and then drive away. You're staying mobile and safe. If you want to speed up the filling process, try leaving a hydrant wrench and a fill hose at the hydrants. And speaking of hydrants, you don't want to lose homes because of something as small as this. Not all fire departments use the same size connectors. It seems like fire departments learn this over and over the hard way. Not having compatible equipment with nearby responding fire departments can end in disaster. Make sure you have appropriate adapters for your hydrants and hoses to give to your mutual aid partners. All the water in the world won't do you any good if you can't access it. Okay, the fire is just about to arrive. Your teams have prepared the exposures around as many homes as possible. Their goal wasn't to prevent every ignition. It was to reduce each structure's risk so that it won't become involved as the fire front passes through. If more homes here had applied firewise principles, your teams could have worked more effectively and prepared a lot more homes. As the fire approaches, it's time to move to your safety zone. If your safety zone is located within the neighborhood, you can still use this time to extinguish spot fires that threaten structures. You should have left a sufficient amount of water in reserve. You won't need a lot to put out a spot fire. Even a shovel full of dirt could do the trick. Make your reserve last. Don't use your water without first assessing the situation. Now, if you're waiting in a safety zone outside the neighborhood, take this time to reorganize and plan your re-entry. Refill your apparatus and decide which engines will go to which areas. Once the fire front has passed through the neighborhood, re-enter quickly as soon as it's safe. Once you're back in, you'll shift from defensive to offensive mode. It's time to put out and overhaul any structure ignitions or spot fires that endanger structures. Send some of your crew to check out the neighborhood. Concentrate on structures first. Prioritize. Some homes may need immediate attention. Others may be so involved that you couldn't save them no matter how much water you have. But at the same time, remember that not all fires present an imminent danger to structures. At this point, a backpack pump may be your best water delivery device. It will extinguish most small ignitions and permit your crews to cover a lot of ground quickly. Walk around the entire structure. Check any place that embers might collect and ignite it if left unattended. You might designate an engine to patrol the neighborhood and resupply the hand crews. Take the time to check on foot. Drive-by checks can overlook a small start and cause you to lose a home. It's happened many times. It's really important to go back in and check out each structure after the fires pass through. There can be any number of things duff or heavier fuels that still have some kind of fire in them that could spread back into a structure. Firebrands and embers will hide themselves into the most unbelievable locations in and around the structure. So hours after you leave that structure doing structural protection, you may return and find that home has ignited. So you want to go back and really double check everything two, three times over a good long duration of time. Three, four, five, six hours, sometimes even 10 hours, you want to go back and return. The embers can get into some real crazy places smaller a while and then you've got ignition and you've got a problem if nobody's around. You're usually dealing with just a small spot fire. You're dealing with a handful of pine needles that are burning and a half a gallon of water. We'll put that out. Whereas if you wait for 15, 20 minutes you're going to be looking at two or three trucks to actually put that out and it's going to be a whole lot more of a problem. A successful operation begins long before a wildland fire arrives. The residents in your community play a crucial role in your effectiveness. By applying basic fire-wise principles they can make the difference between your success and a disaster. Success also requires a new way of thinking. As we've seen in the scenario, how you get your water matters less than how you use it. And being mobile and thinking on your feet matters more than how much water you have because a dozen tenders filled to the brim might not do as much to save a home as one well-timed pail of water.