Video of the original 13 Situations That Shout "Watch Out"

RamblingsOfAChiefOfficer.com took our images of the original 13 Situations that Shout “Watch Out” and embedded them into a one-minute video. It’s very cool, and something I would never have thought of doing.

Here is more information about the development of these images.

The El Cariso Hot Shots (Cleveland National Forest in southern California), from about 1972-1973, developed the first curriculum for basic wildland firefighter training. It was then referred to informally as the “basic 32-hour course”, and eventually evolved into S-130/190. Originally it was a slide-tape program with an integrated instructor’s guide, tests, and a student workbook, and was later converted to VHS video tape. The course included sections on the 13 Situations That Shout “Watch Out” and the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders. I was on the crew from 1970-1972.

A black and white version of the 13 Situations graphics, each on an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper, was available to us before we developed the training package. They were sent to us through USFS channels–I don’t know who the artist was. We had an artist on the crew who developed from scratch a lot of the graphics in the basic 32-hour slide-tape program, but all he and we did regarding the 13 Situations graphics was to enhance them a bit and colorize them. Then Tom Sadowski photographed them and the other graphics for the program and made slides. Tom and I and others also took the rest of the photographs that were in the basic 32-hour course.

I have copies of some of the slides from that slide-tape program, and a year ago I had about 700 old slides and prints digitized, and among them were the 13 Situation images.

The original and the enhanced images were developed by the U. S. Forest Service. They are in the public domain, therefore they may be used for training purposes. If you do use them, we would appreciate your letting us know, as Ramblings did.

Here are some photos of the basic 32-hour program being devleoped.

Rick Bondar and Tom Sadowski working on the basic 32-hour wildland firefighter training package, 1972

Making professional-quality graphics in 1972 was much more time-consuming than it is today. Sometimes we used peel-and-stick letters and hand-drawn art. It is very difficult to photograph graphics, getting everything square and perpendicular to the lens to prevent distortion. Once it was photographed, that was it. There was no photo editing, or straightening, cropping, or changing the lighting or correcting the spelling.