 In this module, we're going to look at an issue that affects many firefighters each summer but is seldom talked about in the context of its importance to a safe and productive fire assignment. When we talk about crew cohesion, we are talking about how a crew interacts, how the crew identifies with itself, the interpersonal connectedness or group dynamics. Dr. Don Driesen is a sociologist who wrote the article, Crew Cohesion, Wildland Fire Transition and Fatalities. In that article, he notes that sociologists know from their studies that cohesive groups are safer than groups with little or no cohesion. He also states that experts who have studied why people died fighting wildfires have long noted a connection between fire crew cohesion and fatalities. One of the recommendations from the Human Factors Workshop in 1995 stated that we should develop methods to speed up crew cohesion before fire line assignments. The tri-data study in 1998 made two recommendations about improving crew cohesion. One was to foster better crew cohesion, especially among type 2 crews, and the other stated that attention should be given to developing good crew dynamics. More recently, the Management Evaluation Report of the 30-mile fire mentioned that there was a number of issues that limited the development of crew cohesion for the type 2 crew that was entrapped on that fire. These included collateral duties of command, fatigue, incident complexity, lack of opportunity to work together, and management effectiveness. All of these reports recommend that we increase the cohesion of wildland fire crews. To help us with this, we talked to Dr. Patrick Withen. Like I said in a previous module, Dr. Withen is currently in McCall Smokejumper and an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. Crew cohesiveness is very important in wildland firefighting. All too often, crews are thrown together and sent out on the line. I've been on crews where I didn't know half the people there. Some people I hadn't spoken with for weeks at a time and so on. And when you go out on the line, you just do not know what to expect from people. That's really what we're talking about. If you have cohesiveness in a crew, you can go out there and you can say to this person, go scout that line. And you know they have the capabilities to do it. There's no doubt. Whereas if you're on a new, thrown together crew and you ask someone to do this, you may know that they're such and such a GS level or that they have this experience, but you don't actually know that they have the ability to do that because you've not seen it done before. And this brings us to the point that the only real way to build cohesiveness is to spend time together and do the job together. And time together includes time together on the crew, but also off time is very important for building those personal connections. It's really just about knowing everyone on the crew and coming to identify yourself as a crew and understanding your capacities as well as your limitations. To take a closer look at crew cohesion, let's look at the Rock Creek Fire. To do this, we went back to the field and talked to Mike Bland. Mike was the recipient of the 2004 Paul Gleason Lead by Example Award for his work on creating a training staff ride for this incident. While I was working on the Winnemucke district, I'd heard about the Rock Creek incident and we're always looking for new ways and opportunities to deliver training type programs. And we started looking into it and realized that there was quite a few lessons that could be learned in this incident. This would also provide us with a very local perspective on things that could go wrong on the fires right there on our district. So we had a great opportunity in our own backyard. As we go through this scenario, please keep your focus on crew cohesion and how it affects the outcome of this event. At 12.45 on July 28, 1939, a 23-person CCC firefighting crew was dispatched to the Lightning Fire in Rock Creek just north of Winnemucke, Nevada, near the small community of Orovada. The average age of the crew was 20 years old and much of the crew was inexperienced and several of the crew members had no fire experience at all. The fire was located mid-slope on a spur ridge between Rock Creek and Antelope Creek. A group of local ranchers had begun an initial attack on the fire at 1300 prior to the arrival of the CCC crew. Due to the steep terrain and upslope movement of the fire, little progress was made. The crew arrived at the mouth of Rock Creek at 1400 hours. The crew boss assessed the situation and made the decision to divide the crew into two squads. The crew boss took one squad up Rock Creek and approached the fire from the top through an area that had burned the previous year. The squad boss took the second squad and hiked a short distance up Rock Creek, then crossed through a saddle tying into the tail of the fire. The general weather forecast for the day called for high temperature near 100 degrees with the winds out of the southwest at 5 to 10 miles per hour with high probability of thunderstorm development throughout the day. Minimum relative humidity was around 15 to 18 percent. The sagebrush in the area was 3 to 5 feet tall on the slopes and 6 to 7 feet tall in the drainage bottoms. The understory consisted of perennial and annual grasses. The ground was rocky and deceptively steep. Hiking proved to be difficult. As the second squad moved toward the tail of the fire, they began to get scattered out with several crew members falling behind. It was evident that physical fatigue and stress had started to affect many squad members. The squad boss and seven of the 11 crew members stopped about 300 yards below the fire edge to wait for the trailing crew members. While waiting for the remainder of the crew to arrive, the squad boss began a tactical briefing. Shortly thereafter, a mature thunderstorm moved directly over the fire. The downdrafts from the storm caused an abrupt wind shift and velocity increase upwards to 50 miles per hour. At 1500 hours, the wind shifted 180 degrees. The fire activity increased and the tail of the fire, which was cool, now became the head of the fire. The local ranchers working the fire rapidly retreated downhill to their vehicle. They were yelling at the incoming crew to turn around and get out. We were trying to fight it, but we could tell the wind was getting a little bit stronger. Pretty quickly, that wind got real strong and we decided, we better make a move here. So we went back to our horses, we had them tied up over there. We went over there and took the hovels off them, got up on them, and we started down that ridge. Because about that time, that wind was really starting to blow. And we got down that ridge, oh, I don't know, maybe half a mile or so, and we see these boys walking up that other ridge toward the fire. And we was motioned, there was a canyon right between us, and we was motioned to turn back. But they couldn't hear us, I guess, and I don't know if they could see that our hats are not, but we had our hats in our hands and hollered at the same time. But they kept running on going, and we were scared to turn around and go back. That ridge was pretty steep, going toward the fire, and the wind was really starting to blow. The squad boss, realizing the immediate danger of the approaching flame front, gave the order to start hiking back to the truck. He noticed the trailing crew members had already turned around and were running downhill. Most of the squad with him started running in various directions, despite efforts of the squad boss to maintain order. The firefighters were now in the direct path of the rapidly moving flame front, with no way of getting into the black. The headfire was being pushed downhill by an east wind from the thunderstorms over the fire. Now let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook.