 In 1991, Paul Gleason wrote a paper titled LCES and Other Thoughts, drawing from a long firefighting career that started in 1964 and included working as a hotshot supervisor and district and regional FMO. His paper introduced the concept of lookouts, communications, escape routes and safety zones as an interconnected system. It has since become the cornerstone for wildland firefighter safety and inspired another generation of firefighters. Chad Mayhew is one of those firefighters and has been analyzing LCES and how we use it. So LCES. I love LCES, right? And wildland firefighting profession. It's just a ton of lists. We got more lists sometimes than we know what to do with and actually they all have a use and a place for us but if there's one list that we count on, that we trust, it's LCES. Why? Because those are the four key safety measures for avoiding entrapment and burnover in the wildland context, right? We trust LCES. We trust that if I have my LCES covered, if I have my LCES in place, I'm going to be able, even if this fire, everything goes to hell in a handbasket, I'm going to be able to get out of danger and get to safety and at least I have my safety measures covered. I know that for the experienced firefighters that is already intuitive, ingrained, it goes without saying but I'm telling you, for a lot of folks, there's times where we do LCES without even thinking about fire behavior. So if we could underline this as many times as possible, LCES doesn't make any sense if it's not based on fire behavior. But more than that, LCES has to be based on the fire potential, has to be based on the worst case fire potential. In other words, I need a safety zone that's going to be adequate. A safety zone is going to do the job if the fire does its worst. This is a key pitfall at LCES, right? It's forgetting about change, right? Fire is dynamic. Fire is constantly changing. Wind is constantly changing. The location of the sun is constantly changing. My location relative to the safety zone is constantly changing. We're in an environment that is constantly changing, constantly dynamic, but it's a very common pitfall to use LCES in a way that's not dynamic. I call it set it and forget it syndrome, right? Where I said I got, I checked those things off. If the safety zone was there at 10 a.m., I guarantee you that thing is still there at 1600 hours, right? So the question isn't, is it there? The question is, is it still adequate? Is it still going to be enough? Based on conditions now and how conditions might be changing, is this thing still going to work for me? Dynamic fire behavior means dynamic safety measures. Dynamic fire potential, I need dynamic LCES. I think one of the very useful things about approaching LCES in this way based on, based on the intent of LCES and based on fire potential is it gives you a way of defining the components of LCES in a very useful way. Take lookouts for example. If you ask firefighters what's the definition of a lookout? What does it take to have a good lookout? You're going to get all kinds of answers. Do lookouts have to be on high spots, low spots, see the whole fire, see how much experience. Can they have collateral goodies? There's all these factors, right? And it becomes pretty tricky to try to nail down exactly what it takes to have a good lookout for this situation and for every situation. With this approach it gives you a way, I think it gives you a way of doing it, because what allows you to do is it allows you to say look, with this approach to LCES what is the fundamental intent of a lookout? The fundamental intent of a lookout is someone who's going to see the early warning signs, recognize them, and be able to get the word to me in enough time for me to get to safety. It's the intent of the C in LCES. And one piece of that is when it's time to pull the trigger and get to the safety zone, I'm confident that there's a line of communication from my lookout directly to me and that the word's going to get from him or her to me in enough time for me to get to safety. That's one part of communication in LCES. The other piece of it too has to do with making sure that I'm getting and sharing key info about fire potential, about changing conditions, so that was I'm noticing these key indicators, I'm not just keeping them to myself, but I'm making that information available to the folks around me so that they're using that to update their essay and they're recognizing that changes as well. How many of us do this, right, where we go, do I have a way out of here and you look at that little deer trail and you go, yeah, I got a way out. Check. Right? The real issue is if this fire starts cooking, if this thing starts doing its worst, is that escape route going to be adequate for me? And in some situations, a 30 second escape route isn't going to be adequate, right? Because a fire can get to you faster than you can get away from it. If I look at the fire potential in my best judgment, right, and I look at my LCES in my best judgment, I make the judgment called a look based on what this fire is capable of, each element of my LCES is adequate. If this fire does its worst, I'm going to be able to get myself and my people unresponsive before I'm going to be able to get us to safety. What that means is what? I can engage confidently. I'm still going to need to keep updating my essay. I'm still going to want to keep questioning, looking at something that's changing. But you can have a three hour escape route uphill with all kinds of gnarly stuff. You can have a three day escape route. As long as that escape route is adequate based on the worst case fire behavior, if it's adequate, it's adequate. It's a judgment call. Human beings are not going to make perfect judgments, right? But there's no substitute for our subjective human judgment. What's the definition of a safety zone? How big does it need to be? Where does it need to be located? I don't know how you define that objectively. The only way to define a safety zone has to involve some element of human judgment, right? It is a judgment call to some degree. So let's define what that means. The issue with a safety zone has to be this. Based on what this fire is capable of, am I confident that this spot is going to be adequate, that we're going to be all right in there if this fire does what it's actually capable of doing today? It's not something that I do for OSHA. It's not something I do for the chiefs. It's not something for the guys in City Hall or the state capital or even in Washington. We don't do LCES for them, right? We do LCES for us. LCES is for me to avoid me getting burned. And the other people that are with me, it's for us to avoid getting burned. That's all I have to say. Your facilitator will now lead you in a tactical decision game.