 As wildland firefighting has evolved, we have seen an increasing number of incidents that involve multiple jurisdictions, multiple agencies, and a variety of firefighting resources. It is not uncommon these days to be working a fire next to a private contractor, both paid and volunteer structural firefighters, and various law enforcement officers. Trucks and command vehicles of many different colors seem to be converging on incidents at the same time. And because of this, we have found it imperative to work through operational difficulties that we've encountered. The era of cooperative efforts is here to stay, and the need for common terminology and understanding is increasingly important. Let's listen to some structural firefighters talk about wildland firefighting. As a manager coming into an incident where there's multiple agencies, multiple resources that we don't really know who they are, it's very difficult to account for all those folks. There are a few shortcuts that we can do to help us out, but it's still a difficult thing. One of the things I like to do is initially right off the bat is establish the command structure and designate somebody as a division, as a staging area manager, things like that that can capture the resources that we have out there. The initial attack division supervisors number one priority in my mind is to go out and get a full accountability of everybody that's out there, get them checked in so that we know who's out there. What we like to do in the structural firefighting they do this is called PAR, a personnel accountability report. And what they do is they check with each and every one of them and make sure everybody's accounted for, and then they give me a PAR report once they've determined that. And they will say, Operations Division Echo, I have PAR, which tells me he's accounted for everybody out there. Another thing that I like to do, and it comes through the pre-planning process, this will help it out, is through the initial dispatch we try to get the volunteers and other agencies to come over to our frequency and check in with us as they're responding so that we know they're out there. When I enter an area, this urban interface, my major watchouts are the roads leading in and out of the area, the communications we have, some of these areas you don't have good communications because you're in a canyon. Who's already in the area? We want to make sure who's back in there. Is there a staging area set up? Do we respond there first and then dispatch out of the staging area? Where the command post is located, where the instant management team or the instant commander is at that time. So those are our main concerns, but communications is the biggest issue we have to deal with and knowing where we're going and having an instant commander know where we're going. What we do is always risk benefit. We'll risk life for life, but once you've covered that, it isn't worth. Any sagebrush out there or any timber out there isn't worth losing somebody over. Any person's house isn't worth getting seriously injured or dying over. You got to put it in perspective. You get caught up into the excitement of what's going on and sometimes you don't look back at the big picture. Do you have somebody looking at the fire and what's going on? Do you have good communication so you understand if there's a blow up or something like that, you might peel out? Do you have an escape route? If you do, how far away is your safety zone? Simple things like that. Just keeping your heads up and watching what's going on. We're used to doing the structure of firefighting. The cooperators are a little bit better at probably reading the fire and where it's going to go. I look to those guys for a lot of feel on where the fire is going, if it's going bad or if it's going good and rely on each other's expertise. That's what I was saying when I said before, leave your egos at home. Fire really has no boundary and that's the approach that we've taken with respect to our federal partners in terms of initial attack. It's worked out very well and there's some obvious positive benefits that we receive from them in terms of training, grant funding, equipment. They're expertise, specifically with some of the fuels issues that we have. They have those resources that we don't have. I think those are some of the things that might be overlooked sometimes when you form some of those relationships or some of the ancillary benefits that you have when you work with agencies that are geared up to deal with issues of vegetation and fuels management. They have the technical expertise that we don't have and certainly would be inappropriate for us to try to fund on our own. One thing we heard very clearly from all the firefighting cooperators that we talked to this summer is the absolute need for proper pre-planning before the fire season. Let's hear from a structure firefighters point of view as to why pre-planning is important and what it should entail. Pre-planning with the local cooperators doesn't matter who it is whether it's NDF, the Forest Service or your state agencies is critical to being able to be effective and be safe out there. You need to establish your communications and how you're going to do that. You have to understand each other's capabilities and develop the interpersonal relationships so you understand who you're fighting fire with and what their capabilities are and what they can do. One of the biggest agenda items needs to be communications. You need to know what frequencies you're going to use and you need to know those prior to responding to alarms. So radio frequencies and response frequencies is generally a must. The other thing is where you're going to respond and what type of equipment you're going to respond. We need to know what each agency has to respond and what their capabilities are and how you can intermix these. I think there's a couple key points that cooperators and agencies need to address prior to the fire season. One of them is a thorough and complete understanding of the ICS system and how it works and setting up a command structure. In our area, it's vital that we set up a unified command and it works real well. I think other cooperators need to follow our lead and set up that command structure as early as possible in the incident as you can. It makes the transition a lot easier as the incident progresses. The second thing is a good communications plan. Unfortunately in our area we've had a couple of burnovers in the past due to communications and the good part that came out of that is we do have a frequency allocation plan so that the command channels and tactical channels are broadcast with the initial dispatch so that we're not out there trying to figure that out on the run. It's already given to us. Now we're going to look at the high crow fire scenario that occurred in the foothills of Boise, Idaho and see firsthand the benefits of good pre-planning. At 1550 on the afternoon of July 6, a request for mutual aid assistance for the fire off Warm Springs Avenue was routed from Aida County Dispatch to the Boise Interagency Logistical Center. The weather forecast for the day called for sunny skies, southwest wind 10 to 15 miles per hour, low relative humidity at about 16%, and a high temperature of 95 degrees. The current temperature was 92. Six Type 4 wildland engines, one BLM Type 3 helicopter, one US-4 service Type 2 helicopter, one BLM air attack and one BLM IC Type 3 were dispatched as outlined in the pre-attack plan. Contact was made on Warm Springs by the BLM IC Type 3 to the Boise City Battalion 1 who was the IC at the time. 100% of the fire perimeter was active and exhibiting rapid rates of spread. At this time the fire was approximately 100 acres. The IC's main areas of concern included multiple homes in the area, homeowners and public onlookers, narrow roads and limited access to the fire. There was also power lines and slow-moving traffic building up along Warm Springs. The fuels were flashy cheatgrass and had a high brush component in the drainages. The terrain showed numerous natural chimneys and boxed canyons. As the incident rapidly escalated in complexity, unified command was established between the BLM and the Boise Fire Department. Additional resources from the county and federal agencies were requested and in route. A staging area was established at the Bend's Crow Inn on Warm Springs Avenue. Additional resources began arriving which included one Type 3 BLM helicopter, one hotshot crew, two seats and two heavy air tankers, four Type 4 engines, several structural engines, several dozers with transports and multiple law enforcement agencies. At this point communications were very difficult and accountability and span of control became a major concern. As we begin this next group exercise, please think about your own decision making process as you address this situation. What rules and guidelines and experiences are you drawing on and in what order are you sizing up this situation? What are you anticipating? Are you following the process outlined in the standard orders or are you just reacting to informational inputs? At this time let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook.