 Well, how did you do? Let's go back to Lamar's tape and see what actually happened in Nevada, besides Lamar losing all his summer's wages in the casino. At this point, in order for us to meet our objectives safely, we needed adequate resources in place to handle any spots outside the line. It was essential that we hold it because of the ranch and community down canyon. By 1700, the firing crew had burned out and secured the corner at Point B, and the dozer had pushed past the head of the fire. The crew started burning out again around 1730, but not before signing an engine and an NDF crew to hold and begin mopping up the corner at Point B. By 1900, the dozer was tied back into the ridge line, leaving only a short section of line for the crew to burn out and secure. By 1930, the crew had completed the firing operations and was now also tied into the ridge line. Well, Lamar, it seems like that situation turned out okay. Do you have anything, Dad? Yeah, Ted, I wrote a few notes here. First of all, I'd like to say that I think the IC3 did an excellent job in briefing us and other resources on current fire behavior prior to us getting there. Going back to what John Krebs said, the grouping of the fire orders, first we need to know fire behavior, weather, before we can come up with an operational plan. I think we did that there. Before we can fight fire safely and provide for safety, we need to know fire behavior. Secondly, there were two primary briefings. Both were similar in that they were developed through a process of LCS, but the one key element that was present in both of those briefings was the incident pocket guide. We actually utilized the downhill checklist quite a bit. You actually pulled it out on the line and had a meeting of the mines right there and actually physically went over that list. Right. There were quite a few of us included in the meeting. Most were overhead from other resources, resources that were going to be helping us on the operation. But we actually pulled that pocket guide out. And it's easy to do. We just keep it right in our pockets here. It's small enough that we can work with it. You can keep it as a part of your pack or whatever you use to carry on the line every day. But we actually utilized that checklist. And I think what it did was actually brought up the comfort level of each individual on the fire. And we had resources from outside the region that were on that fire. And it made them feel better about what our plans were for that day. The last thing that I'd like to mention is that there was one area of concern, one critical area that we needed to work with. And that was the corner. Point B. Point B. If you look at your student workbooks on page 13, that illustration at Point B is the one we're talking about. We needed to shoe up that corner. We needed to handle that corner. And if we couldn't do that, we actually couldn't go forward with this operation. We looked at it myself, the strike team leader of the division, the IC3 all walked down, took a look at it. It was doable. It was totally doable. We walked back up. We discussed it. I went to my crew. These guys, some of the other guys went to their resources, their crews. We talked about it. We started the process. The one thing that needed to happen also was that as we worked down that line, we needed to make sure that we had resources spread out, covering our backsides, meaning that we brought fire down with us to the corner. We needed to get to that corner in adequate enough time that we could get in there, get those resources in that area to secure that corner. The end result is that it worked out fine. The dozer got in position. I was with the dozer most of the day. We did have a spot over, and that's the one thing I probably should mention, but we had resources in that area. All three lookouts spotted at about the same time. And we had resources in that area, and I think it only was... We were looking at probably a tenth of an acre, but it was handling it very quickly. We tied the line in, and the thing that made I think this operation as successful as it was was that we had adequate resources. We utilized it down to a checklist, and saying that again is that it brought up the comfort level for each individual on that fire, and we had competent personnel firefighters. You know, that's one thing I noticed. You had plenty of resources on that. That was a luxury. To me, I was thinking, man, he's got a lot of people there that can serve as lookouts. I mean, I thought that was great. Now, the coal and engine operations, for example, on that same scenario, you might not be that lucky. I'm sure a lot of times you run out and you don't have those people available to post three different lookouts. How do you deal with that when the personnel really isn't available? Well, that's something that we have to, you know, again, assess at the time. You know, I probably wouldn't have been able to pull off, you know, something like this with six people. There's just no way. You know, that's when I've got to back off and reassess and say, is it really worth it? You know, is there somewhere else somehow that we can go about this differently? You know, that, again, is a comfort level. Of course, I don't have 20 people. So, you know, some people only have three people. Maybe order up more resources and just wait. Anybody else? Yeah, a lot of really good points here on this downhill procedure that Lamar and the SIC type III and the other overhead did here on this one day. One thing I'd like to point out about downhill line construction is, just to give you a little bit of analogy, let's just say you're going to go out and fall a tree. You're on a fire and you're just really not up to that level of falling this huge diameter tree that's got the inside of it, haul it out and stuff. You know, what do we do? We back off. We say, let's bring somebody in that type C, class C, fall or let them drop the tree. In this case, they were totally qualified, had a lot of expertise there. You know, they went down the checklist to make sure that the situation, you know, at hand was one that they could really do. I'd say just a word of caution. If you feel that you're not at this level, you know, don't be attempting this just because you saw something on a little video like we're demonstrating you here today. Make sure that you do have competent people there with a lot of experience and expertise to pull off something like this. Good point. Another thing that I noticed on that scenario was Lamar and the hot shots and the other crews that were working, they constantly reevaluated their tactics, pointing out that area in the Fire Point B, I believe it is, that's a trouble spot for them. They had to slow down there. They had to take a step back and, you know, make sure what they were doing is going to work. Then they experienced a spot fire. You know, there were certain situations there that, you know, if they weren't keeping aware of what was going on, could have came back and bit them in the end. The other good lucky thing is that you had clean black that you were bringing with you with that burn. So that was obviously your safety zone of choice right there. Right. And it was. We had a lot of resources in that corner. And it was kind of a no-go, no-go kind of situation. We didn't actually have another plan. We didn't have a contingency plan. To be honest about it, we were going to utilize that two-track and we knew we could do it. But by going down, scouting it and taking a look at it, we knew it was very doable. But we knew we need to have those resources in that corner to make it all happen. Well, let's say you had one less crew or, you know, you didn't have that dose. Or, you know, do you still feel you could accomplish that? Or, I mean. I think even without the dozer, the type one crew that we had in place, with the actual mine crew, I felt like we could probably clear that road enough to where we could get in there and do it anyway. Because you knew their limitations in that fuel type or you knew what they were experiencing. Right. Yeah, I feel like, I believe we could have made it. We could have made it work. Well, you got me all choked up. I know it. That was a good job. You love that crew, don't you? You guys got a good crew. Anything else on downhill line construction in general? Nothing else? Let me just pose one question to you, Hector, and maybe Brad, too, because aerial delivered firefighters a lot of times end up on top of the ridge. And we heard some of this in some of the segments from people from the field. But when, you know, that's always a tough call when you see a fire midslope, you're on top of the ridge and you're getting ready to send people down there to scout it out and to start an operation. You know you're walking through some green to head to it. I mean, what kind of cautions or what red flags are going up in your head when you are that person walking through the green heading down to a fire that's below you? I mean, I think that happens a lot and we don't talk about it very much. So I want to get your thoughts on that. Safety zones. Before we even try to, you know, we land, get out on the ground. I mean, everybody has to know where their safety zone is. That's got to be established right off the bat and the route to that safety zone. You know, especially when you're getting ready as an initial attack, you're amped up, you're ready to get on that fire line. It's easy to, you know, overlook those things. But you can approach a fire or go downhill to anything without, you know, your lookouts, your scape zones and, you know, obviously communications and all that in place. But I mean, for me, that's the number one. I've seen it done a couple of different ways, Ted, you know, in hairball situations like that. One that I saw that worked quite well one time was the first two jumpers we threw out of the plane. We actually threw them on the opposite ridge so that they could serve as lookouts while we walked down to this fire. You know, that was a good tactic and that's one that can be used with helicopters and other aerial delivered firefighters. Another one is, well, we just flat out didn't like being above the fire. So what we would do is just jump somewhere else and do it just like normal people and walk up from the bottom. May take you a little longer at times. You know, it may be that you're not going to get there as fast, but if that's what you got to do in certain situations, that's what you have to do. You know, that's a great point because, you know, there's been several times where we wanted to get close to that fire, but you've got feelings of saying, you know, we can't do this. There's it's not going to happen. So choose to land somewhere beneath it and hike a ways or, you know, take the harder route. But, you know, in the end, I felt much more comfortable about doing that. Error on the side of safety. Exactly. Anything from engine perspectives, driving in? A lot of times when, you know, of course, when we drive into fires, a lot of times we're probably going to end up sometimes above the fire. So again, we kind of, you know, we're not being aerial delivered. We don't have the luxury of actually seeing what's, you know, below it at that time. Maybe at that point we'll take a drive back around, you know, hopefully find a place lower that we can actually, you know, get a good bird's eye view and then, you know, go from it, you know, go from it from that standpoint, you know. Okay. Good. We're not as fortunate. We walk in. And the thing that I think about most is where I'm going to anchor this thing in. I like all the points that everybody mentioned, but I think my biggest concern a lot of times after looking at what you guys were saying is where am I going to anchor this thing in. So that's one of my big, my pet peeves here. I think one of the things too, you know, along with either on any of these fires, we've been talking quite a bit about, you know, fire behavior, that kind of stuff, but we haven't really hit on taking weather. I mean, that's one thing, you know, we get our forecast out of our dispatch center usually every day, but when we're out there, we need to, you know, assign somebody to actually be taking the weather so that we were getting on the ground, on the ground information. I mean, I, you know, Lamar probably has a little bit more of a luxury than I do. You know, I've got six people, maybe I've got three people and, you know, it gets tough sometimes to try and, you know, take the time to do that weather. But I think that's a really important thing that we, you know, a key factor we need to be paying attention to also at all. You're right. We are lucky. Good point. Yeah, we've got 20 individuals there that we've got. We've got Half the Crew that's got Bill Willikis anyway. He's got radios. Well, I'm going to go ahead and move on. I think that was a good discussion and obviously you can see from this exercise and from our discussions that there are many, many factors in what you need to consider whenever you're attempting downhill line construction or indirect line construction. The first question you should answer is, is this, is there a safer way to do this assignment? And if there is, why take the risk? Also, remember to view the downhill line construction guidelines as a useful tool in daily operations like Lamar was saying, and don't just, it's not just something that you should read once at the beginning of each season. It's a tool to be utilized in day-to-day operations. So now to shift our focus a little bit, I'd like to ask our panel some of their thoughts on some other issues important to, important to fire line safety. As you know, it's hard for us to cover everything there is relating to fire safety, but we still have several points, little discussion points, that we'd like to kick around a little bit. And I want to do this by utilizing a question-answer format. I'll start by asking the panel some common questions that come up, it seems like, every year in refresher training. So why don't I start with this one? Besides the issues we've been talking about so far, what other aspects of fire should, you know, firefighters be concerned with that may pose a threat to their safety? In other words, like what else out there can really harm us? Anybody want to take this on? I think, Ted, one of the big things that I'm dealing with a lot is inexperienced drivers. Whether that be on my engine crew, I've got, you know, brand new folks coming in, thinking that just because they've been four-wheeling, you know, their whole lives up in the mountains that now they can take on an engine, you know, a commercial-sized engine or smaller with a full tank of water, and they think they can drive it the same way as, you know, their pickup trucks. And that's one thing, you know, maybe on a slower fire, maybe I can give those people a little bit of a chance to start driving the engine. Another thing is, you know, I'm sure with Lamar, sometimes you fly into areas, you get put on a bus. Well, that bus driver is used to driving buses in town, and they're not used to driving them up in the mountains. So they've got to be pretty heads up about that. Fatigue is another big issue. Fatigue drivers, a lot of times, again, I may be the only driver assigned to that engine. And I'm dog-tired. It's a choice there where I've got to say, hey, we got to pull over here so I can get some sleep, you know, going home. I agree with Nicole. When it comes to drivers, we crack down on our drivers quite a bit and make sure they don't drive too many hours. And sometimes we get in that thing that we're trying to get there really fast. We want to get there as quick as we can. We might want to beat the other crew there. What happens is that sometimes that driver forgets that you've got eight other individuals in that box behind you, and they're bouncing around in the back of that box, and you've got to be careful just not to cause a big-time accident doing that. Point I'd like to make, Ted, is this year with this new national fire plan and this increased budget, we've hired a lot of new personnel that we're going to see out on the field this summer. It's going to be a new occupation to them. Kind of referring back to one of the interviews we saw earlier, as we're a firefighter referring to when she first started, how a lot of the common nomenclature and acronyms, etc., were over. We've got to be real careful to experience people that are out there, to make sure that our briefings, our terminology, etc., that we're back to the basics. Make sure that we're doing all of our stuff geared towards all the people that are going to be out there in the field this year. And let's just understand that. Good point. You know, I guess what really stands out to me is complacency. It's easy to become complacent after several successes on fire assignments, but we've got to remain humble to the fact that it takes one mistake to get us in a bad situation. Another thing to touch on what Hector was talking about is if you don't understand something, ask the question. Slow down. Don't be afraid to say, hey, I don't understand what's going on here. Explain this to me prior to going ahead and doing what you're asked. I think that's a real good point. Also, along with the new personnel that Hector's talking about, we're going to have, it seems becoming more and more popular to have out-of-region people assisting in home units when they get inundated with fires. Boy, I'll tell you, there's a lot of safety hazards that are geographically isolated, and listening to a safety briefing when I go to a new area is extremely important, especially down in Florida. I mean, you have hazards that you're not used to in your home area, so I think that's one that can hurt you. But to kind of sum up this question, you know, Paul Gleason mentioned that you should be a student of fire, and I think that's part of it. I mean, if somebody was like, tell me all the hazards there are to firefighting so that I know what to be aware of, well, that's an awfully long list, and it's going to take you an awful long time to ever even remember it, let alone get it down on paper. And I think being a student of fire helps that. Every season you should find another hazard that you weren't aware of that you can kind of keep heads up about the next time you go out. So I encourage everybody to do that. Let's move on to the next one. And the next question I'm going to ask the panel is, how do the common denominators of fire behavior on tragedy fires play into some of the other issues that we've been discussing? Hector, common denominators? Let us refer back to the Gibson Bench Fire in Colorado, the example we saw earlier. If the students could refer back to page 11 of the student workbook, and also to page 8 in your incident pocket guide. Let me go down this list right here, and let's talk about a real typical fire, the Gibson Bench Fire. How many fires we go to that are just like this, and how many common denominators might come up even on one of these smaller fires? Let's just start at the top. Incidents that may happen on smaller fires or isolated portions of larger fires. Well, it was definitely a smaller fire, wasn't it? Very characteristic of others that we've seen in this area that may have blown up at one time. Going down to number two, fires that look innocent before flare-ups or blow-ups, in some cases, tragedies occur in the mop-up stage. Fairly docile towards the latter parts of the evening there, but we saw it make its runs earlier. Flare-ups that generally occur in deceptively light fuels. In this particular situation, this would have been one of these common denominators that probably didn't apply to this situation, but it's definitely not one you want to take lightly, referring back to man-gulch and other fires like that in light fuels. Fires that run uphill surprisingly fast in chimneys, gullies, or on steep slopes. Well, look at the topography that we had there. The gullies, the chimneys adjacent to the area that we were actually fighting fire in. I think this one was definitely apparent in this situation. Wind in which direction or wind speed unexpectedly shifts. Never really had these real weird wind shifts, but the wind speed was a factor, and that was illustrated by our streamers, and we knew that when we were out in the air. In fact, I would have hated to be on a round parachute that day. Ted, that would have been pretty tricky. Just to reiterate how important it is to recognize these common denominators, what sounds like a real easy fire, which had ended up being a great deal and stuff. We go down this list, and just about every one of those was right there on that fire that day. And again, that's one of those deals where if everything works out well, nobody even thinks about it. But if something would have happened on that fire and things would have gotten bad, it definitely would have been brought up. Geez, look at this. All these common denominators for tragedy fires were present. Did anybody notice it? So these are things you should keep in mind. Lamar, you got any comments on that? You know, the one that sticks out to me more than anything is that first one you were talking about. Most instances happen on smaller fires, isolated larger fire, portions of larger fires. And I think what happens is we tend to get a little bit more displacing, a harbor, a sense of false security. And the same hazards exist on that small fire that exists on a larger fire. And I think each individual needs to realize that and not forget it. Yeah, good point. Let's go on to the next one. What do you do when you're asked to do something that you feel is unsafe? And we get this an awful lot. Is it ever okay to say no? This is a real tough question. Brad, you want to tackle this one? Yeah, every firefighter has the right to say no to an assignment that they are not comfortable with. However, I believe you have that right to say no, but don't just turn down an assignment. Maybe you can talk with the operational people and figure out why you feel it's unsafe. Maybe there's a solution to tackle this assignment in a safer manner. The reason I say that is perhaps by turning down this assignment you could be jeopardizing other personnel later on in the fire. But if it does end up that there's no way to accomplish that safely, then that's fine. But I don't think it's just left up to say, hey, no, we don't want to do that. I think we should look for solutions and try to do this in the safest way. Like you were saying, but I think you got to make sure that you kind of negotiate a little bit. There are some, maybe we can do this, but maybe we need to just mitigate this problem. And I think you and Taylor talked about that the other day. We can't just, you know, a lot of times we get in those situations. It might not be the right thing to just say, no, flat out, no. But if we look at it, let's go down and take a look at this area. Maybe if we find a different route and we can make this happen, maybe we need to give up a little bit of land here, acreage. Add a lookout. Add a lookout. You know what I mean? We can mitigate some of the problems there. Right. I'm with you, Annette. I don't like the idea of people using their right to say no as an excuse to get out of good hard work, which I'm afraid may happen once in a while. But at the same time, the way I always looked at it is it is a negotiation. It's a meeting. It's kind of a meeting of the comfort zones. Everybody has their own comfort zone. And that's based on their experience and how much risk they're willing to take. Right. But that comfort level, you've got to kind of meet them. They've got to find a meeting or a joining place before you can get an assignment. And also, I think negotiating safety issues like that is good for everybody. It opens everybody's eyes to what hazards might be present. Well, it stimulates the thought process. People are saying, well, hey, I didn't see that before. Or maybe if we did this. But nobody's going to look down at you for saying no because, like you said, your comfort level is not there. It's just a matter of explaining your situation and understanding what everyone's feelings are. I remember giving an assignment to a crew and they said, you know, we don't like the idea because yesterday we were here. And this is about the time of day when that fire took a good run. That's good information. You know, I mean, to me, and that was information I didn't have. And if they would have just said, no, we don't feel safe doing that. Well, you know, I wouldn't have learned anything from that. They wouldn't have learned anything from that. It would have been just kind of a frustrating situation. You might have took it kind of hard, huh? Perhaps. Or you might have just got another crew to go down and do that assignment for them. And they would be faced with the same risks. Yeah, exactly. I think another thing that we have to pay particular attention to, especially in the upcoming years, is something that Hector made a little bit of mention too, is with the new national fire plan, all these new people that are coming in, there's going to be a lot of, you know, greener people, maybe not as experienced people now these days. And we got to make sure that when we're giving assignments that it's, you know, to their level, you know, maybe maybe they're not quite as experienced as what Lamar's crew would be or Brad's crew or the jumpers. But that's one thing we're going to have to start really thinking about here in the next few years. Knowing their limitations. Knowing your limitations and don't be afraid to say, listen, I don't really have, you know, I don't have the experience to be doing this. Good point. I hope people are brave enough to do that this year. Yeah. Let's move on to the next one. How about what do you do when management has unrealistic expectations of Lyme personnel? And this is when, you know, you get an assignment that may be safe, but totally unrealistic or impossible. And this happens occasionally. Lamar, you got any comments on this one? I got a great example, actually. Nevada, a couple of years ago, we were on one fire and we lost our lights, our bumpers. And we were just kind of beat up pretty bad after the one fire. Well, we get into camp and all of a sudden we got to go to another assignment, got another assignment. They want to say that night our first light the next morning. Well, they want to get the buses in and try to bust us up or get some bands and get us up. But all of a sudden, if you know anything about shot crews, those rigs are everything to us. That's our mobility. If you take the rigs away from us and then you limit us on tools, we can't actually do what we're put there to do. It takes away that type one status, more or less. We went up and did it. We wired some lights up and it's one of those situations where, again, we negotiated and we said, okay, we can make this happen, but we need some time. We got to have lights to go up there. But that's one of those situations where management wanted somebody on that fire immediately. They wanted to get some personnel on that fire. And we just weren't able to get there. So in our opinion, it's more unrealistic for us to go up there at that time. It was unrealistic for us to actually be out there without our rigs. And like I said, we ended up being there. But it was one of those situations where we had to negotiate. And I think that's what you got to do a lot of times. And I think sometimes this situation arises because we have failed as firefighters, line firefighters, to relay good information. I think it's real imperative that when we come off the line after a shift that we get with ops, we get with plans and we let them know what we're seeing out there so that they can make realistic plans for the next day. And I think that that in itself will kind of eliminate some of this where management's asking you to do things that really just aren't going to happen or can't happen. So it's an information process. It's a two-way street. They can only make the best plans they can make is off of the information we're giving them. So I think that happens a lot on larger fires. Anybody else? Well I think that goes as well with your district FMOs or your AFMOs. Management can only base their decisions on the information you're giving them from the field. If they want you to accomplish something but they're not giving you the resources or the tools you need, and you're trying to attempt that, you're setting yourself up for a bad situation. You just got to be honest. I know sometimes our egos might get in the way but we got to step back and say, hey this is something I can't do. Let's move on to the next one. Team transitions. They're always kind of tricky and as you heard in one of the clips before there's a team transition watch out situation almost present. But team transitions are always confusing and potentially dangerous. Is there anything we can do to maintain safety concerns during a team transition? And this is from IA to type 3 or from a type 3 to a type 2, even type 2 to type 1. What do you think about this one, Nicole? Well I think you know at this point like you said team transitions are a definite watch out situation listed or not. Number one, you've got to maintain your personal safety, maintain your personal safety, maintain your crew safety, your integrity. Another thing is keep communication lines open. The frequency is often changed during transition times and just make sure you're still able to talk to the people, talk to your joining forces, whoever may be next to you. You've got to make sure that if there isn't a working plan that you and the people on the ground are making a working plan, keep it going during that transition time. And if no one's in charge or if you don't know who's in charge, appoint someone. Make sure somebody's getting the stuff done. Make sure we still have our lookouts up there, you know, that we still have our communications. They were still keeping everyone posted on the escape routes and safety zones. The fire doesn't change just because there's new people coming in. Good point. I think a key thing on transition, let's just say from the jumper's perspective, being in the IC type 3 mode a lot of times, and we may transition it to type 2. Keeping good documentation. Okay, good maps, what kind of natural barriers we have out there, what resources we've already utilized. This helps a team that comes in to just a little work that much smoother, that much less stuff that they'll have to worry about and be able to now focus more on the fire behavior, the resources at hand, etc. So the more that you can help them out with all of those little things that start to accumulate, the smoother that transition is going to be for them when they finally take over that fire. That's a good point. So it's easier said than done, though, a lot of times during IA, you know, things are bouncing pretty heavy right then and you've got your mind pretty occupied, but it's vital. From a helicopter's point of view, you know, it seems like during transition your whole mission seems to change sometimes going from an IA resource to a support resource. How about you got any comments on that, Brad? You know, that's a good point. Depending on where you're from and how you are utilized, you may, in fact, become part of that transition yourself. You might have to just totally switch gears into a support role and that in itself lends itself to a whole new set of problems as far as equipment and people and personnel. Like Hector was saying, I think the best way to do it is just keep your documentation straight and, you know, make it as a smooth transition as possible. Good. Hopefully we answered that one sufficiently. Let's go on to another one. I've heard people talk about situational awareness. Isn't that an aviation term or does that apply to the fire line? I guess somebody just explained situational awareness. Hector? Well, Ted, I believe it's a ridgination. Probably did come from aviation. You know, maybe cockpit resource management. However, today we have a little thing in our handy-dandy incident pocket response guide. In fact, on page one called risk management process. Everyone should take a look at this, but you'll see that one of the first things on risk management process is situational awareness. Recommend that people go through this risk management process, at least read over it, understand what's involved with it. You know, situational awareness to me is that it's basing judgments on your experiences. You know, what your comfort level is drawing from your past experiences. Good point. Nicole, do you have anything? I think, you know, it's pretty well summed up by these guys. It's just taking in everything. That'd be, you know, your fire behavior, past, present, weather, you know, the objectives, the communications. It's just, it's basically the whole thing, you know, taking it all in and being able to process it. That's it. Just being able to step back knowing when to kind of back up and take a good look. In fact, another version of this, I'm always reminded of look up, look down, look around, which is another tool that to me is almost the same thing. It's basically just keeping your head up and looking around, seeing what kind of clouds are formulating, just watching all the little elements and all the little cues that we can take to help us out and help us be safer on the fire line. You know, Ted, and just real quick, that's the responsibility of everyone. You know, like, you know, 20-person shot crew, everybody on there should be situationally aware. You know, engine, jumpers, hell attack, it's everybody's responsibility for your own personal safety. I agree. Yep, and speak up. Yeah, don't be afraid to say, hey, what's this? I'm seeing something here. Good point. Let's talk a little bit about after-action reviews. Are they worth doing? What are they? Brad, do you got anything? Well, after-action reviews are a time where you're away from the fire line. It could be with briefing with operations. It could be just as simple as after initial attack, debriefing your crew. It's, you know, it's a time for learning, developing your people, talking about the fire, talking about what went good, what went bad, things people saw, things that they didn't understand. Maybe that's a time when they can get some answers. Amar, you use those? We use them a lot. Debriefings. You've been talking about debriefings. Years ago, that's all we called. I'm actually debriefing. In the last few years, we've been saying, been calling them the after-action reviews. And this is a time where you, like you said, take those, everybody can ask some questions. And it's important to get some feedback from each individual on what he's seen, what he thought was good and what he thought was bad and what the hazards that he's seen out there that maybe I didn't see, some things that I didn't see. And then on the flip side, getting that information back to the divisions, to the strike team leaders, overhead operations, letting them know what we've seen out there and how we felt about how things went also. So I think, I think everybody needs to be involved in that act-to-action review. I think another point that the after-action reviews or debriefings, whatever we're calling them these days, can focus on is, we usually focus on what went wrong. But maybe this is a great time for us to learn what went right and make sure that we keep doing what went right. We tend to dwell on what went wrong for good reasons, but we also can talk about when it went right. I just kind of back to another analogy. Let's take a pro football team. Did they debrief after every game, win or lose? Better believe it. They go watch films, they watch the blocking, tackling, etc. We're essentially, you know, a bunch of teams out there. There's coaches, there's players, etc. The smoke jumpers, we try to debrief every fire that we go on. It may not be right afterwards because you're going to right another one, but when we have spare time, we'll sit down. We'll have everybody there that was on this incident. We'll talk about everything from the time we got the fire call, the time we loaded the plane, to the time we were overhead, to the time we fought the fire, to the time we came home. And it's really good because everybody gets everything out on the table. If there is anything that we can make better, we know it right then and there. If we just let it go on, slide, you never improve. Should be a no holds barred. You know, should be an opportunity to people to clear their minds and say what's on their chest. And I think they should include people not only that were on the fire, that particular fire, but people that were getting ready to go on a fire or who were on a different fire at the same time because I think there's lessons to be learned on every fire. And I know I've learned a lot from hearing jumpers or other firefighters coming off of fires and debriefing or going through an after-action review. I can hear about fire behavior. I can hear if they had any problems with tools that I may end up having in my hand when I get on the next fire. Transportation, dealing with local dispatch, frequencies. There's just all kinds of things you can learn from other people's experiences in fires that were previous or different from yours. So I think it's important that we share that information not just with people that are on the fire with us, but everybody. Documentation also. Documentation. Let's not forget that. Let's document each after-action review. It gives you a good reference to go back to. At this point, I'd like to ask the panel if they have any final thoughts about any of the safety issues that we've looked at today. You know, at the beginning of this program, I challenged everyone to actively seek out one new mental trigger or awareness that you can take with you to the fire line in the season that will keep fire safety foremost in your mind. I'd like to ask our panel if they've come away with any new awareness or if they have any final thoughts. Nicole, what about you? I think, you know, we've talked about so much information here, but the one thing that I've really keyed in on is communications. We really need to keep those communications open, talking to each other, you know, just making sure that people understand what we're actually saying out there. You know, I get in a hurry sometimes when I'm doing a briefing and, you know, may want to rush through it, but I need to step back, make sure my people are understanding me, making sure that, you know, I'm understanding myself for that matter. And I think, yeah, communication is definitely the key for me. Another thing is, is that I'd sure like to see everyone out there this summer, you know, have a good time, be safe, and make some money this summer. Good. And communication is the key. You know, we're not going to be able to mention everything in this presentation. There's a lot of issues that I'm hoping your local facilitators and you guys are bringing up on your own in your own discussions. Brad, how about from the Hell Attack point of view? Do you have any words of advice? Well, you know, at this point, I'd like to thank the panel and thank you, Ted, for your good job as a host. You know, I guess for me, it's use your training. You don't underestimate your gut feelings because they're probably right. And be safe, be professional, and have a good fire season. Thanks, Brad. And it's been a pleasure to you, but, you know, I, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. How about from the world of smoke jumpers? Hector, any final thoughts on safety? Well, a couple of messages to pass on. Being on a fire with Ted is in itself a little bit of a hazard. The guy wears so much Dippity-Doo, it's like having drift torch fuel in the back of your pickup. On a more serious note, I'm convinced that you can never learn all the risks and know about fire line safety. We listen to numerous interviews today and with the panel discussion and the exercises we have. There are so many ways that you can process this information, make it where it's a natural reaction. You know, it's going to be a little too late out there, you know, when things go bad on a fire to crack out the instruction book. I just like to say you guys really need to know this stuff before you go out there. And there's a lot of things to learn. We've heard a lot of very inspirational charismatic people, the Paul Gleesons, you know, to the John Krebs to refer into things in the Little Incident pocketbook, Look Up Down Around, developed by Jim Cook, you know, an old salty hot shot. Clark Noble, Paul Heffner put this book together. You know, there's a couple of, you know, old firefighters that knew a lot about fire. So take this stuff to heart. It was put together by people that really knew what they were talking about. And I hope everybody has a safe summer. Good points. Lamar, what about for the hot shot crews? You got any important points you'd like to stress? You know, we're going to be putting a lot of hours out there next year, this upcoming spring and summer. And I think I would just like to close by saying something to John Krebs, that fire order number six. And it stands out to me all the time. Throughout this whole process, that's what stood out to me more than anything. Stay alert, keep calm, think clearly, and exercise, and have a good season. And if you do want to make a lot of money and work a lot of hours, you need to get on Lamar's crew, because for some reason they just seem to do better than everybody else. We're taking applications right now. He's always recruiting. Always recruiting. Well, anyways, I'd like to thank all of our panelists for taking the time to share their real life experiences with us and to help us out with this training. It's only by passing on these invaluable personal experiences that we learn from each other and we stay safe out there. A lot of good information needs to be passed. Thanks again. Well, that about does it for this portion of the refresher training. Remember, there's additional information in your workbook about fire line safety, as well as a list of websites and other reference material that you could take advantage of these resources. Remember, safety is your responsibility. Please take it seriously. Your facilitator will also be passing out an evaluation for this course. Please take the time to fill it out and let us know, you know, how you think we did. The BLM training unit takes your comments to heart and we're going to use them to update this program for future refresher training modules. So let us know your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas. You still have one more important, very important module left and that is, with your facilitator, you will review and practice the proper deployment procedures for your fire shelter. It is every firefighter's goal to retire from this business without ever deploying the fire shelter. But if that event ever occurs, this training could save your life. So, but before you start shaking out those shelters, I'd like to thank you for your participation. Good luck on a safe fire season and I hope to see you out on the line. Really, you still have to every, I really, every five minutes, every 10 minutes, keep on asking yourself, can you back up and get a larger picture? And are you wasting your time trying to be so aggressive on the small portion and go bigger picture? And that's really what we did. We just took the helicopter up a couple, you know, a little higher level looked and found roads at a bigger picture and burned off for a moment. And safety-wise and tactically, I was, you know, confident that was exactly the right decision. What you have to have in place, I think, though, is teaching personnel on the ground to relate to the incident commander that that's what needs to be done. Hey, our ground tactics are not working. Whether it's stage brush and hey, it keeps on breaking out behind us or you're enforced a type to where this is just too thick, we can't do a direct on this, this steep portion or whatever. One, relaying that on to the incident commander. Two, having confidence in your personnel to realize that they know what they're talking about. You need to adjust your tactics and go larger. And three, managers from fire all the way up to land, resource managers, not being critical fire personnel to say how convenient, try to stop it. Things tend to escalate. Problems tend to escalate without people really noticing them. So it's kind of like the 18 watchouts, you know, okay, you're violating one watch out and then you're violating two and then three and then four. And the step from three to four watchouts doesn't really trigger anything in your mind. Well, okay, we're violating one more watch out. It's not a big deal. But when you step back and you go, well, shoot, you know, we were violating no watchouts an hour ago and now we've got five watchouts that are being violated. You know, maybe we should step back here for a minute and figure out what we're doing. That situational awareness, it's kind of the ability to step back from what you're doing and look at the big picture and you need to do that every now and again just to take stock on what's going on. Another thing that I would suggest for IA resources that are going to a multiple jurisdictional incident being, say, for instance, the forest, the BLM, urban interface type stuff is involved. The thing that I would really stress to them is that when you're being dispatched, if you don't understand or didn't get who the IC was going to be, you find that out, you call back to dispatch, make sure that you understand that. You also need to understand what frequencies are going to be running off of. And once you get there, you make sure that you can speak with the IC and the other folks on the fire before you start your fire suppression. Because if you can't talk to them, that's just a really bad situation. And a lot of times when we dispatch people out, we'll say that during the initial dispatch, but the folks are getting ready, jumping in their rigs. They may not hear it. And any, if there's any question, they need to call back to dispatch. Well, as the thing that a ground pounder can do, that'll help me out as an air attack. The thing that helps out the most is make sure you know what your air to ground frequency is and that you're monitoring that frequency. There are times when I'm busy, I'm monitoring three or four different frequencies. I know that the people on the ground sometimes have local fire departments on, so they're monitoring three or four frequencies. Occasionally, things happen really quick and I need to talk to people on the ground like right now. So, you know, in my mind, that's the biggest thing they can do to help me out is know what that air to ground frequency is and monitor. Never be afraid to learn anything new and never be afraid to ask the questions and be concerned about yourself and your crew going into a situation just because you're new doesn't mean that you can't raise concerns that maybe no one else has thought about. I guess I feel ultimately I'm responsible for my own safety on the fire line and and I think when I first started fighting fire, my first supervisor, he insisted that I attached myself to someone that had a lot more fire experience than me and that that's the person that I would go to. I could go to anyone with questions, but you know that I guess as you become more and more experienced, you depend more on yourself and you don't have to ask as many questions, but I think that ultimately you know your limitations and you know how fast you can hike, you know how strong you are. You know what you know about fires and nobody else can be responsible for your safety but yourself. Enjoy your job. If you're not enjoying it, then it's work, then you're not paying attention. You got it. You got to want to be there. You got to want to do the job and you better be learning from every fire. You're not going to ever know it all, but to me the basic reason I'm still here is I have fun. I like doing it. No matter how much I know or how much I don't know yet, it's still fun. I would say keep it fun.