 Dr. Whithin's background as both a sociologist and a smokejumper give us a unique perspective on fire line leadership issues. Let's listen to his thoughts on another important element of our job, fire line decision making in high stress situations. Dr. Whithin explains what happens to our decision making capabilities when we are constantly expected to perform at a high level while being continuously exposed to high levels of stress and fatigue. Stress is inherent in any fire situation and the reactions to stress are rather well known. Basically people start to get what might be called tunnel vision as they get more stressed out by a fire or an accident or whatever the situation might be. They just start focusing in on that and because of stress they actually have less ability to look at other situational factors going on around them. We know that typically a person in a medium stress situation that's familiar with the situation can handle about seven different tasks at once. That would be seven people or handling fire line strategy, seven things along those lines. But as stress mounts that number goes steadily down and there are many different kinds of stress. Fatigue is a kind of stress. So if you're tired, exhausted, you should take that down a notch or two. You can't handle as much as you could before. And we know that under totally stressful situations people just get completely focused on whatever it might be at hand. So you can have this situation of the firefighters and they're really getting very worried about what the fire is doing and they don't feel that comfortable at all with the fire and what might they do. They might just start tunnel visioning down to what are they going to work on. Well, my pack needs to be readjusted here or I need to fill out my little notes book and so they can handle that. That's the way a lot of people will deal with stress as they will encounter or try to deal with what they're familiar with and they will deal with that. And the thing that's causing the stress, they might not be addressing that at all. There are times when people can actually recognize that their leader is experiencing stress and getting more focused on a few narrow tasks and not seeing the big picture. Well, there are many things that can be done. Certainly, we're all familiar with just how to lighten up a stressful situation, you know, appropriate humor, these kind of things, taking a break, relaxing, if that's at all possible is an excellent way to do that. A crew leader can go a long ways in reducing the stress of their crew. First off, the stress has to be recognized, you know. Are people noticeably unhappy? Are they fidgety? Are they complaining? Are they saying that they're very uncomfortable with this situation? We know through the risk management process that you reassess what's going on and you brief people over and over again as to what's going on. And so that can be a method that's used to reassure your crew that things are going, maybe not as you planned, but they're going in an acceptable direction. And there's, we can be reassured that our safety zone is still adequate or that our tactics are working. One well-known feature of stress is that it is cumulative. It will build up over time. If you're experiencing stress on a daily basis, it does take its toll in a way similar to long-term fatigue. Really, the best way to deal with long-term stress is to know that it exists and to recognize that it might be happening to you or people on your crew and to react appropriately. As we come into these stressful situations, we can do the situation check outside, but we should also do an inside situation check and see how am I reacting to this stressful situation and be able to reassure ourself that we are staying on task, on the critical task at hand because certainly in stressful situations those become even more important. Know whether your tactic is to lose your temper more frequently, whether it is to really get that tunnel vision and focus on some simple task, whether your reaction is to withdraw, whether your reaction is to become humorous and light-hearted and not be able to focus on the task. And then while we're monitoring our own stress levels, if we're a crew leader we need to also be aware of how our crew is reacting to this stress. Are they reacting to my stress? Are they reacting to the fire situation and deal with these situations as they arise? Once again, let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook.