 As the members of the Bear Divide Hot Shots describe indicator training, follow along with the decision-making model in your student workbook. Well, we started the indicator training probably in the year 2000, and one of the reasons it came to be was because we started to get a lot more movement within the crew. In the old days the crews were eight, nine years, six, seven-year temporary firefighters, but with the apprenticeship program and the movement we're getting in the agency, we're starting to see only maybe one or two years within the crew. So what I wanted to do was to get these folks up to speed right away. We were challenged to get them up and meet the synergy within the crew, the cohesion within the crew, and along with that, how do we get them ready to go to like Region 3 in two weeks and start fighting fire? How do they prepare themselves or how do we prepare them? So I started thinking about it and one of the things, not only myself but with the overhead on the crew, we kind of thought about SA is one of the big factors. How do we get them up to speed to recognize SA out there? How do we teach them to recognize the fires talking to them or the fire ground? We call it battlefield indicators, but it's the fire ground indicators. How do we get them to recognize what's going on around them? Not just fire behavior indicators, weather indicators, topography indicators, but everything. What's the big picture? So one of the things was listening to the radio, visually look at everything that's going on around you, and it's not only what's happening today but what's happening this morning and what happened the previous day or even the previous week. So there could be some historical stuff there. So basically it's just taking all the information around you and finding a way or giving them a tool or giving them a skill to recognize all that stuff and help develop those slides quicker but with quality. It's something that I think the crews all do. It's nothing new. It's just that we've attached a concept to it. We put a name to it so that they key on it a lot quicker. So what we do is we include in the 80-hour training and then we use it every day in our 80-hour training. We go back and relate to it, whether we're doing like entrapment avoidance stuff or safety and mitigation stuff, sand table exercises or any video exercises. We say, well, what were the indicators in there? You know, not only the fire behavior indicators but all the indicators to led you to believe what the outcome might be or to plan for the outcome. What I think it is it's like enhanced situation awareness and we wanted to enhance that situation awareness to make quicker decisions, to help with the decision making process. Basically putting everybody on the wide side of the time wedge that you have. We don't want them here on the narrow side of the time wedge. We want to keep everybody here on the wide side of the time wedge. And we don't believe that it's all luck. We think that chance favors the prepared firefighter. So if you're always prepared using with good SA, then you're always going to be or most of the time be on the wide side of the time wedge. And that's our goal, to always be there. So if an opportunity arises, we can either go in and get something because we've made ourselves more aware or we can get out a lot quicker because we made ourselves more aware. So it's not just luck. We put chance on our side, on our favor. We'll look up, look down, look around. We use all those indicators but we also go outside of that and use other indicators. Like we use indicators from operational standpoint, tactical standpoint or logistical standpoint. So let's say we're listening to the radio and we're listening to all the different frequencies out there. Maybe something's going on in another division. Let's say it's 10 o'clock in the morning and we hear that they're getting spots. Well, that should indicate to us that something's going to change in our division. There's a potential we're going to get spots. So we start preparing a lot sooner than later. Or let's say that we're trying to meet an objective for that operational period. You know, based on the IAP or something we came up with tactically. It might entail that we have to have air support or something for it or some other resources for it. We might hear something go on in another division if we're paying attention. This is the whole fire ground we're paying attention to now. We might hear something in another division that tells us we might not meet this objective now. Or it might be a safety thing. It might be a safety alert thing or indicator thing where we might have to back out or something or slow down or reevaluate. So it helps us to constantly reevaluate what's going on. It helps us with our trigger points and it helps us to anticipate a lot sooner than later. You know, every piece of every 50 feet or 100 feet of fire on the ground is a whole new environment that you're moving through. You know, if you're going through this 100 feet it could be in flat ground on the drainage. The next 100 feet can be on a slope. That's a whole new environment once you go to that slope. So there's a lot of slide building you can do on every 100 feet of line that you're going through that you're working in. Fire behavior wise, weather wise, topography wise and as far as tactics and strategy. You know, how is this how is everything around me going to affect what I'm doing here right now? When we go through the AR process we go through the outline AR process but at some point in time there when we talk about why did it happen then we also talk about well what led up to this happening what were the things out there what were the indicators out there on the fire ground that told you this was going to happen and then once we figured out what those were we try to remember them and we key in on them we focus in on them to help develop those quality slides. So the next sign of that situation comes up they see it sooner so it keeps us on this side of the time wedge I mean on the decision making time wedge instead of over here so you're not being reactionary you're being more proactive. When it was taught to us a lot of the times I think people have they're more distracted by the title trying to figure out what that means instead of listening to the concept and staying to yourself so all they're really saying is you're looking at your surroundings putting yourself in tune with your environment and trying to predict certain outcomes whether it involves you or not and for the most part you do it on a daily basis like when you drive to work you are focused on the lane you're focused on your speed you're focused on your vehicles aside from you behind you you're looking at the individual driving the vehicle next to you you see a female putting on makeup you see another person on a cell phone you see a bunch of distractions going on around you as they're driving a two ton vehicle and you're all on the same roadway and mentally all drivers on the road are putting all these images in their head and for the most part I think most people are capturing these images making a little slideshow as they say in the battlefield indicators and you're creating a sense of the hazards around you and I think the only difference is that people on everyday actions don't take those images and those hazards and give themselves an out and and like I do now with all this training I was right off the bat the first thing that I started realizing I always do now is when I drive I imagine if an accident were to happen this person swerved and hit that person that wasn't even paying attention to them where would I go what would be my next move and it's kind of all like a chess game the battlefield indicators all basically saying that you need to look at what you have and make not only the next move but possibly the next three or four moves and that's kind of how I see it so I think where we lack experience we have to make up in training and it's just one more process that helps get people you know to that point faster I think they're a step ahead of the game all the time when they're here and things are kind of making contingency plans for themselves just for planning purposes you know they overhead on the crew could be out scouting coming up with plans and they can hear options going back and forth they hear us talking we're out scouting something they hear us talking about having a window of opportunity to burn something or do something like that first thing they're going to be doing that's an indicator to them they need to be looking at their burn equipment they're going to be checking all their stuff to kind of keep some that height and level of preparedness where they're talking burning here or we're talking about a whole lot of direct hand line stuff in the back of their mind that's an indicator you know the saw equipment we're going to have to bring the domar out we need to build a 4th saw team that kind of thing we're all here together we're all brothers and sisters and you know nobody wants to see anybody get hurt or anything like that so you know I'm usually very very verbal about stuff you know if I see something I don't like I'm going to say something about it or if I see something that's you know maybe unsafe I'll be like hey I want you to try it this way you know lay it out there and if they tell me to shut up then they tell me to shut up but why not throw the idea out there maybe it's a good idea you know well the fire line indicators are very important because you know situation awareness is to me it's number one to try to anticipate and prepare yourself for worst case scenario or prepare yourself for what's going to happen and I think fire line indicators is just a way of increasing that situation awareness and you know chance favors the prepared firefighter or the paired mine so if you're always on that wide end of the of the time wedge you're always going to be in your safe zone so what we do on the cruise we try to keep ourselves in that fat end of the time wedge always have a plan going take all the situation awareness and indicators into consideration having a plan having a backup plan you know A, B and C and if it happens that maybe due to time or fire behavior that we're not able to carry out that plan and as the time wedge gets shorter we can maybe fall into something else and kind of stay on that side of the time wedge so we our cohesion as a crew we built the same as a family and since I've been here we've never had a problem with the decisions they'll come to us and say this is why we're choosing this decision and say this is the way it's going to be and that's it we have a mind to speak and if our decision isn't logical to them they'll give us the logic and then we'll try to give a logic and then usually try to come together on a mutual basis and we still have the chain of command the supervisors that's out real good that falls back to that tense firefighter or fight fire aggressively but provide for safety first well I think there's different levels of aggressiveness and in the old days and this is probably nothing new this is stuff we were probably taught in the old days sometimes you've got to take an aggressive approach or be aggressive when you see a situation that presents itself to take care of that situation and that puts us on this side of the time wedge and that's what I was meaning earlier chance favorites of a paired firefighter it's not only to back out of something but maybe to go get something too provided it's safe enough to do so and there's times that I think not I've seen other folks or I've seen maybe like teams or resources not go get something when they had the chance to get it because they're safe at the time and they waited too long and then it became into a situation where it wasn't safe and then they were reacting to it and then they were trying to get it so put them on the wrong side of the time wedge instead of going and getting it when they should have they waited too long and then it became more reactionary so that wasn't fighting fire aggressively you know in my mind they should have fought fire aggressively when they had the chance or when the opportunity presented itself every 50 feet of fire line is a different fire environment you know you have topography changes you have field type changes aspect so whenever we're on the fire line and we're cut in line and we're sticking with a certain tactic we're always constantly in our heads reevaluating the tactics we're doing are they matching up with the fire behavior are they working when we get into this type of area like if we notice we're it's into the brush and it's going up slope and starting to get in with the mixed timber and starting to do a field type change are we going to have to adjust our tactics a little bit are we getting a little bit more roll out now to where we might have to back off rethink things a little bit slow it down and adjust our tactics to what's going on so you might get lucky but who wants to get lucky you don't want to get lucky you want to be safe I think that's the most important thing being safe because I don't care I love this job I love fighting fire but if it's unsafe I ain't going to do it there's ever a day that I feel that you know what this is unsafe yeah of course there's that there's that margin of danger but if that increases to a point where I feel like this is stupid I ain't going to do it anymore and that's battlefield indicators makes it so that you're not going to do anything stupid pretty much so my goal was or our intent was to get these folks up to speed so when we leave here we're ready to fight fire like now as a hotshot crew to be ready as a type one hotshot crew that was our intent so this helps get everyone on the same page sooner and this helps this helps us as we're going out let's say we're starting to get to IA fires in region 3 or go to fires in region 3 they start using this concept and it brings everybody closer or it puts us it brings us sooner to a cohesive crew synergy wise they're all on the same page because now they're all thinking about they're all working and they're utilizing and thinking about this concept so when I go through the briefings we go through talk about the IAP they're already in their mind thinking for themselves what do I need to do to prepare for this day or what do I need to do to prepare myself for this day stuff like that so it goes down to the lowest common denominator that's the first year firefighter were you able to tie the processes of the decision making model into the discussions on indicator training as Mike said most people are already doing this however Bear Divide has managed to integrate this into the culture of their crew at all levels