"Safety" or "risk management" in wildland fire?

The Colorado Fire Camp sent out a message from their Twitter account to their 101 followers on October 21 which said:

#OSHA vs. wildfire agencies: Safety & Health no longer goal of #NWCG structure, new focus on risk management http://bit.ly/4oy38E 2:50 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

To say that safety and health are no longer goals of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) seemed rather surprising, so I went to the link, which leads to an organization chart showing the Committees of the NWCG.

NWCG_Preparedness_Branch_Committees

A portion of the chart is shown here on the right. As you can see, the organization is changing. The “Safety and Health Working Team” is becoming the “Risk Management” committee, and the “Incident Operations Standards Working Team” is merging with the “Training Working Team” to become the “Operations and Workforce Development” committee.

To say that “safety and health is no longer a goal” of the NWCG is misleading at best. And yes, the term “safety” in the organization chart has been replaced with “risk management”. But that does not mean that “safety and health is no longer a goal”.

Here are some definitions of the term “risk management”.

  • Risk Management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of unfortunate events. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management
  • The process of determining the maximum acceptable level of overall risk to and from a proposed activity, then using risk assessment techniques to determine the initial level of risk and, if this is excessive, developing a strategy to ameliorate appropriate individual risks until the overall level of risk is reduced to an acceptable level. en.wiktionary.org/wiki/risk_management
  • Risk management is the active process of identifying, assessing, communicating and managing the risks facing an organization to ensure that an organization meets its objectives. www.lesrisk.com/glossary.htm
  • The technique or profession of assessing, minimizing, and preventing accidental loss to a business, as through the use of insurance, safety measures, etc. Origin: 1960–65. Dictionary.com

I exchanged some email messages with Michelle Ryerson, the fire safety program manager for the Bureau of Land Management, the current chair of the Safety and Health Working Team, and interim chair for the Risk Management Committee. I asked about the reason for the changes and she said the name change better reflects their approach to safe and effective fireline operations. The reorganization of the NWCG gave the groups an opportunity to change the names, encompassing a more comprehensive programmatic approach.

“We are in the process of converting over”, she said, “but have not been officially chartered under the new title of ‘Risk Management Committee’ (mission will remain the same) — plan to have conversion happen early spring of 2010 and will make note of it on our website”.

I asked what the effect of the change would be on firefighters. She responded:

“No effect or impact to firefighters — should all be transparent to them as our mission/scope/and objectives will not change–only our name is changing.  In fact, I would say we have more internal support within the new re-org at NWCG as we now have a branch coordinator who is our direct link to the exec board–did not have this under old org.”

To me, “safety” is a rather vague term. Of course we all want firefighters to be safe and we want to prevent accidents. But “risk management” is a little more specific, and recognizes that our occupation, like many others, has risks. We will never eliminate 100 percent of the risks to firefighters, but if we identify them they can be mitigated, or if not, avoided. I told my firefighters “If we can’t do it safely, we won’t do it at all”.

An example of the risk management concept that many incident management teams use as part of their planning process includes the use of the Incident Action Plan Safety Analysis, or the ICS-215a. This form, when used properly, walks the planners through the process of identifying risks and mitigating them.

But getting back to the Colorado Fire Camp sending out that message. On the organization’s web site home page you can find this:

Colorado Firecamp is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, wildland firefighter school, dedicated to expanding the opportunities for firefighters (and those who someday will be) to attend quality redcard wildfire training. We primarily offer 100- and 200- level courses developed by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) in the areas of leadership, incident command and suppression skills.

and…

Simply stated, the mission of Colorado Firecamp is centered on “keeping quality in qualification” of wildland firefighters.

Here are the Twitter messages sent from the Colorado Fire Camp Twitter account from October 20 through the 23:

Forget lessons in new FF #Monopoly, close call means “Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass “GO”… http://bit.ly/3LDeED
9:00 AM Oct 23rd from TweetDeck

#OSHA vs. wildfire agencies: Safety & Health no longer goal of #NWCG structure, new focus on risk management http://bit.ly/4oy38E
2:50 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

#USFS says firefighter rappel death is matter of national defense / foreign policy, tells #OSHA to get screwed http://bit.ly/stNkX
9:19 AM Oct 20th from TweetDeck

I contacted Kent Maxwell, the Training Coordinator for the Colorado Firecamp, and he said that he writes the Twitter messages that come from the Colorado Fire Camp. They also have a blog on their web site which until October 21 had not been updated since June of 2007. Mr. Maxwell pointed out that a blog post in 2005 included this information:

“Disclaimer:
The views expressed on Wildfire Blog are those of vfd cap’n and are not necessarily shared by Colorado Firecamp, Inc. It is also safe to say that the opinions herein will frequently not be those of any particular wildland agency or group of agencies. Other firefighters, management and the general public may from time to time – and at any time – be offended, enlightened and/or intrigued by the content of this site.”

So I have learned that what I thought was primarily a training academy, also takes advocacy positions on issues that affect firefighters, or at least Mr. Maxwell does when writing on the organization’s web site, Twitter account, and other web sites. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the organization supports those positions. The wildland firefighting agencies need watchdogs as well as people and organizations that can call bullshit when it’s appropriate.

To give the organization credit, they have also done a great deal over the last several years to make lessons learned information about historical fires available by scanning (and/or typing?) data from old fire investigation reports and making it available on their web site, which is a very significant contribution to the firefighter community.

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5 thoughts on “"Safety" or "risk management" in wildland fire?”

  1. Thanks Bill for pointing out what NWCG is doing that is good, and getting the RIGHT information out! Mark

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  2. The Forest Service "Fire Operations Risk Management Council" is being systematically dissolved because of conflicts with the Forest Service WO Office of Safety and Occupational Health on key issues. Those conflicts are DEEPLY rooted in who has wildland fire experience and should be making decisions for safety of firefighters vs. those who are pawns of the Agency and haven’t ever walked a mile on the fireline. The RMC was responsible for the strides the FS has made over the last 8 years…… doctrine; institutionalizing leadership training; personal accountability; AARs; FLAs; APAs; etc. The RMC got field folks focused on safety and lessons learned in strides towards High Reliability Organizing, while fully stating (and owning) that fire suppression has known and inherent risks that cannot be completely mitigated. This was a completely foreign idea to folks at the District, Forest, Region, and WO levels who have never swung a pulaski on the fireline.The Forest Service…… In continuing it’s self destructive course……decided if something is working in the fire program and folks don’t understand it or recognize the value…… the Forest Service decides to f*&C& it up….. and make it fail by "reorganizing it" and somehow getting NWCG "buy in".I’m sorry… the re-organization looks bogus at best….. and another attempt to completely keep wildland firefighters from leading… and being accountable for the programs they manage.

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  3. Hi,Business risk management is a career that emphasizes the need for management and evaluation of threats to a company and the development of strategies that can get rid of those threats or problems.

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  4. Kent Maxwell AKA vfd capt has a history of outlandish claims against the USFS and reprinting any of his rants lowers the standard of your blog which has a history of being quite balanced.

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  5. Risk management is the new word for safety. The goals are still the same and some of the processes (ways of getting it done) have changed but its still there to ensure people work in a safe enviornment and there is minimal loss of property, (resources).

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