 After each staff ride speaker finishes relaying the events of the Tarquio fire blow-up and shelter deployment day, staff ride participants have an opportunity to ask them lessons learned questions. You know, I think we had things in place, you know, even being in front of the fire and the setup like this. I was comfortable with the tactics we were using. This is business as usual for us and it's always a little chaotic and you're always getting new stuff thrown at you and sometimes it all happens really fast, but it's happened a few hundred times in my short career as a hot shot to me. So no big surprises at that point. I think we had a good rapport and a lot of good communication. I wish there was some way that I could convey that crew cohesion that I had with my crew. Every single person on my crew and myself knew what was fixing to happen here. And, you know, having kind of brought in these other folks that were working with us into our little camaraderie thing, you know, I wish I could have conveyed that maybe a little better to them. To where we were all for sure on the same page with that, you know. You know, we were all, we talk about 30 mile and the fact that, you know, even though we take care of ourselves, we don't just take care of ourselves, we look out for other people around us too. So we were trying to do that, but I think I could have gone a little further maybe, I don't know. That's my lesson on this one. Things were breaking down and not going as planned and there were just a lot of little distractions. It sort of seemed to get bigger and bigger and bigger and there were distractions at every point. Nothing was going as originally planned. There was something in every plan that was a deviation from the original. This being your first physical location and assignment for the project and your first real visual of it. I mean, you said you drove around, but you got in here, you had to perform tactics on this ground now. At any point, did you just kind of step back and say, or did anyone say, this is lining up not the right way? I mean, the topography, the canyon, the winds that you knew were going to come when the aversion broke. I mean, what was your gut feeling when you rolled through that gaping mouth down there into this and said, okay. I guess I had talked to some of the crews about what they were doing and nobody really expressed a major concern like from previous days. So this being my first day, I've got three type one crews who came back in here and no one brought that to my attention. So I guess based on the fire weather forecast saying that the potential existed, but the crews saying that the previous fire weather that they saw wasn't quite as extreme as what was protected. It was like the potential existed and I knew it, but if the fire behavior hadn't been doing that and the crews were willing to come back in, I hadn't seen it. I guess I figured I needed to at least get a day out here and get a feel for it myself. So my first, it wasn't like it didn't look as black. It was a lot more green. The fire was under an inversion. So things didn't look really bad. My first drive into the canyon. Matter of fact, you couldn't even see that gaping because the smoke was down so low you couldn't see anything when I first drove in. So there's kind of a general comfort level that everyone was standing behind. And that the plan seemed like nobody made a major objection at camp at the morning briefing. Everyone was still in agreement that this is maybe not the best plan, but it's doable. And we'll at least go to it until something triggers us to get out of there. But we need some trigger points and we set them up. And when we met certain criteria, when we realized we couldn't commit to what we had with the resources we had and the comfort zone started to break down and you could hear the tension and voices starting to break down, it was time to just disengage. It was reported at the station below us by Frank that a branch director had showed up. Did you have any interaction with this branch director? I did. He was a branch director who wasn't regularly a part of the team, but he was out here. He was assigned to this area. He actually, I tried to get him to help me with some of the problems that I was having with some of the crews when we were having the refusal to engage and it wasn't quite a formal thing. And I was asking him, I said, do you want to deal with this? Why I kind of go back over here and he's like, well, that's kind of your responsibility. He said, this is what I would do if I was you, but I think you need to go back and talk to him. You're the division soup. It's not my job to be given orders to your crews. So we had kind of a discussion about whose responsibility it was. And I was kind of trying to utilize him as a resource. He was here that could maybe help me so I could focus because I had several things going. And I thought maybe if he could help me there, but he kind of his direction to me was more one of this is your position. You need to go back and you need to talk to him. This is what I would do with you. It was more of a counseling than an assistance. Maybe some of the lessons that you've learned from this or put on your hindsight glasses and talk about what you could do, what you would do differently or one of the things that some people asked. And I guess it was something for me is we sort of have the luxury to say, you know, in hindsight, is that those are worth a life? You know, should I have been more aggressive with Mike Friend when I told him jump in the truck and come with me? If you're one who believes in fate or destiny, you can almost say that if I hadn't had that argument with Mike and hadn't taken the time that we would have taken, it would be a really good chance that we would have met Phil and Jerry in a really bad place. And it might have taken actually longer to turn them around or back up two vehicles that were coming down than it would have to have waited for that dozer. And again, in hindsight, that discussion really didn't take that much more time because by the time he was actually ready to roll was the point that Jerry finally got there and he was behind me. So that slowed us down. But the bottom line is if they weren't coming down, should I have been more aggressive? The next time, should I be more aggressive? There were scenarios that were going on over here that I could hear with Frank and the water handling specialist. And I could hear Frank saying, well, I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. Well, what if we do it? And every time Frank would sort of raise an objection on the radio, you could hear him offer another possible solution rather than just disengage, which was sort of where Frank was heading to. And I guess that became one of the questions that I've been asking a lot of people. And I'm not sure how everybody would because everybody here is not fire. I know that and I don't know which people are in this group or which aren't. But in all organizations and all structures, we always have that hierarchical type. I'm the boss, therefore do what I say. But as much as we can use that as a way to help control or manage people, there's always going to be somebody who's going to be a little more brazen, a little more gruff. Their personality is going to be a little bit more outgoing than yours. And what do we do with the people who, you have the authority and the responsibility to tell to do something, but they confront you? How do we do that? We're all going to run into that challenge. And that's what I had happen to me. And I guess the lesson I guess I've learned is that I was willing to tell certain people, you know, I could hear some other confrontations going on. I was willing to tell those people that they were sort of out of line. This is it. This is the cutting point you're going. I heard Frank tried to make it clear and it didn't seem like it was going. So I got on the radio and said, this is division A. Talking to resource B, you need to leave. Your new supervisor will be Guzman. I won't be able to get out. I've been cut off. You need to respond to him. And I made sure everybody knew it. And then when I got up there, I actually got engaged in one of those conflicts myself. So I don't know how I'll deal with it. But it's one of those things that when you're in those situations, I know that I'll be a little bit more aggressive. The other thing is that we look at this as, you know, again, we have the luxury because no one was killed. What's a dozer worth and all that kind of stuff? Is it worth a life? Because you can get to say that because there were no lives lost here. Everybody would argue it's not worth a life. But that's because we'd be looking at it as an agency looking at a vehicle that's simply a replaceable thing. And it would be pretty hard to argue that from anybody standpoint. But as a private contractor, that's his livelihood. And without that, he has no income and you destroy his life without it. So to him, he's got a little more of a vested interest in it. And I don't know that as an agency, we look at that, we say, oh, well, we would replace it. But how long would it take us to replace it? And in six months, would he lose his house and his bills go? I mean, he's got more of a vested interest than I do. So the next time I get in that situation, how am I going to convince that guy that it's worth leaving that piece of equipment behind? I don't know that yet, but I know that I need to be more aggressive in some of those situations. Why don't you go ahead, Frank, and talk about your lessons learned and things that you could have done differently now that you put some thought into it? I think it would have been nice, of course, to get here early in the morning. But that was out of my control. Someone asked me, well, did you engage the safety officers? And I said, no, I kind of didn't. And did you have a face-to-face with the branch director? And I said, no, I didn't. But like I said, I was just hoping that it would get better. I was just kind of hoping that, OK, everyone would settle down, that he was feeling the pressure of trying to save the power lines. And so maybe he was trying to do a little more, trying to press the team or things like that. So I'm not sure if I'd had to do it over again, I would actually drove down the drainage and went and picked him up. Because here I am telling him to get out and to drive all the way over there to go tell him face-to-face you need to get out when he's a branch director. I don't know if I would have done that. I think I could have engaged the safety guys a little more and say, OK, how can you help us? How can we work as a team here? And I didn't do much of that. In previous days, was the branch director doing the same thing or did this just happen on this day? Yeah, we were all new here. And I think he just rolled into the fire last night before. And he was from Arizona, and I think he just came in that night and they kind of said, oh, go out there, I think. Because he wasn't part of the team. I mean, if he was a member of the team who I know pretty well, you know, it wouldn't happen. Frank, in regards to the safety officers in the branch director, was there two safety officers? There were actually three. There were two sitting in a rig here, and then there was one that was on that side. Were the two here in some form of collusion with the other one? In other words, were they developing their own sub-organization around you? I don't know. I mean, they were sitting here, and they were like, we're safety. And I said, great. But they weren't really tied in with this guy and they really weren't engaging me either. And to be totally honest, I was kind of thinking of them as just two other people I had to get out. And I wasn't really thinking of, OK, well, how can you guys help me look at this maybe from a different set of eyes? But the other safety officer was really becoming, taking an active role along with the branch director. So a sort of sub-organization or a phantom organization was developing. Exactly, exactly. He pretty much, the branch and the safety guy, they pretty much took over those resources. And so I was trying to get in my opinions when the radio would clear. And I think they were listening to him, mostly because he was telling them what they wanted to hear that you could stay up there and still fight fire. You go through all these classes and all these scenarios and you see all that. I mean, I have every Discovery Channel special on fire and have read every book and all those things. And this is just classic. I mean, I could just see the investigation where they say, so you were a task force leader. Why did you tell them to leave? And so I was trying to go through that. But yeah, they were pretty much ignoring what I was saying. And I think it was not so much aimed at me just because I was telling them to leave when they were saying, I think we can still do so. But you eventually prevailed in that they finally gave in when you gave them information that showed their efforts were fuel. So how many of these folks that were engaged here were a part of the morning briefing? Oh, they were all there. Everybody. Yeah, they were all there. You know, when thinking back, someone asked me what else, if I would have, I think at that night briefing, if I could have looked at the span of control, something, I mean, this would have been kind of brazen, I think. But if I'd have said, look, you guys, let's just make this another division. Let me do it and let Alan do his own thing because it's going to get too confusing. But I wasn't sure. You know, on the map, I mean, it looks kind of small and kind of, you know, not much to it. So, you know, I didn't want to go around saying, oh, give me my own division or I ain't going to do this. But looking back, if we would have done that, I mean, sometimes I think on a task force leader, unless you have that rapport, you know, I was telling them things and it was kind of like a suggestion where if you're a division and you say, you know, look, I'm responsible for everyone. It's time to get out. I'm telling you leave. You know, I think it carries a little more weight and, you know, I think that would have helped. Being a line officer and then being in the fire line organization, you know, I guess I'm just used to people falling into place. I'm not used to telling people, okay, now what do you see your role here as, you know, as a branch director? You know, and what do you see me doing? I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm just not used to doing that. And so, but I could have maybe at least got him on the side and say, okay, we're the two overhead here. What do you think? My brother's an FMO in Colorado. And when I was telling him this, I saw him a couple of weeks ago. I was telling him this. It was funny. He just said, well, Frank, if you follow ICS, this, I said, yeah, I know ICS. I'm just, got that one covered. I just, it was just so funny. Cause just people, you know, in the Fargo said, well, what do you mean? That's not supposed to happen. You know, this way it is. Haven't you seen the tree? You know. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that input. Yeah. And I mean, how do you move up in the fire organization? It's not by being timid. I mean, when you're on a 20-person crew or on a, you know, or something, I mean, you're like, oh, that kid, that kid works. Okay, we want them. And so, I mean, we get in this organization and it's not, it's not because, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to do rugged work or you're not into it or you're like, oh, you'd rather, you know, sit down instead of work. And so, you know, a whole organization is geared to those people that are aggressive. And so, you know, you get up to, you know, my father-in-law was a type when I see him and he taught the class and I said, well, how does that go? And he said, how do you think it is? He says, here you have a fire organization that, you know, was driven, you know, is ego-driven. And he said, and then you got the people that want to be the leaders of that ego-driven organization. And he said, and then we named the teams after them. You know, so here's the National Sit Report one with their name behind it. And so, you know, it's, you know, it's, and so you don't do that by being the person that's like, eh, I'm not sure. I mean, you get to those positions because you're the one that says, yep, this is what we're going to do and this is why it's going to work. And by most of the time, being right.