Today we have a guest post written by Dan O’Brien, who has over 39 years of experience in wildland fire management. Dan was Chief of Fire and Aviation for three different regions in the National Park Service: the North Atlantic, Rocky Mountain, and Intermountain regions. Currently he is on the staff of Wildland Fire Associates.
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I have always thought fire information folks have one of the most difficult jobs in fire. They must get the information their different audiences are looking for and distribut it in a timely manner. Operations folks are charged with managing the “actual fire”, but the information staff must manage the “perceived fire” through the information they distribute. While different information outlets are aimed at different audiences it seems that there are often significant gaps, inconsistencies and timeliness issues in the information released.
With regard to information concerning the Las Conchas Fire today (7/1/11) NICC’s daily Situation Report references such current information as:
Active fire behavior. Numerous residences threatened. Evacuations in effect.
It would seem that “numerous residences threatened” might be a bit of an understatement considering there are 11,000 residents in Los Alamos, but it is not mine to split hairs.
Today’s InciWeb page concerning the Las Conchas Fire seems to target the locals and their concerns. Meeting places and times, shelters, closures, pet issues, number and type of resources, etc. are important issues that are adequately addressed. Additionally, there are descriptions of yesterday’s fire behavior, operational objectives and strategies. All this information is accurate, but what is the significance of making all this information available without interpreting it to the public? Reporting 4 dozers, 67 engines, 24 water tenders is pretty useless information in and of itself. Explaining that the engines and water tenders are being used to directly protect residences and other values would go much farther in helping the public understand the need for these and other resources and could go a long way in helping to correctly develop the public’s perception of the fire. I have never heard any information about the effect, positive or negative, of the 2000 Cerro Grande fire on the management of the Las Conchas Fire. Considering 400 families lost their home to the Cerro Grande Fire 11 years ago, I would think there would be an interpretive opportunity in there someplace.
This morning I see on a national news network that the residents of Los Alamos are going to be allowed to return to their homes on Sunday. Other information is reported such as the success or failure of firefighters in keeping a fire from crossing a road or drainage is the sort of information a large segment of the public wants to know and be kept current on. InciWeb is silent concerning these subjects and seems content to report only what has already happened.
Bottom line is that the fire information folks do an excellent job of gathering a lot of information, but then often refrain from doing even basic interpretation that could make the information meaningful to their publics. Just one man’s opinion………
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Note from Bill:
Last year we wrote about an outside-the-box method for providing fire information to the public. In that case an Information Officer Trainee, Leah Mitchell, wrote an article after she was embedded with a Wildland Fire Module while she was assigned to the Cow Creek fire in Rocky Mountain National Park. At the time, we said it was one of the best articles we had ever seen about what firefighters actually do out on the fireline — and we still think so. This is an excellent method for providing one aspect of information about a fire to the public. We hope Information Officers continue to keep this tool in their tool box, although this is the only time we have heard of an agency employee embedding with a fire crew in order to collect information for an article.
Fire-qualified and red-carded agency employees have access to remote firelines and background wildfire knowledge that reporters will never have. Allowing them to actually write articles about ongoing fires, rather than only expecting InciWeb or the dwindling number of newspaper reporters to get the agencies’ messages out to the public, is a smart strategy.
Being a PIO is not easy since you are often held to saying what the IC or agency wants said, or you will be let go.
Agencies have become very tight and controling over the years about what is being said. Some times for good reason and other times not so good reasons.
There has been a trend to use PIOs who will not venture out with the truth or who just don’t know much about the resource. Being politicaly correct is needed at times but I feel it’s more importaint to be honest and not sugar coat or just plain ignore not so nice information. If it’s your property in the path of the fire or new park area you have every right to know the details.
I once watched a clue-less PIO describe fire hand tools not knowing the correct names in front of a pool of TV reporters on a major fire. The individual managed to say a lot about nothing and by the end of the interview everone knew the PIO didn’t know a thing about fire or much of anything.
I have seen some very good ones who take the time to learn about what is going on and have a good relationship with both the IC and/or agency and the public and press. But they seem to be less and less these days.
I was good friends with a a very skilled and well respected PIO at a major National Park who took a early retirement. Over a couple of beer’s one evening he said the real reason he was going out was he could no longer tell the truth and refused to make up lies.
Here we are spending lots of tax money, ordering families out of their homes and making choices that will cost them everything they have. The agencies running things have to keep the people informed with accurate, detailed and up to date information.
I enjoyed Mr. O’Briens comments and he knows the skills of a good PIO.
I appreciate everyone’s comments. My perspective is a bit different because my son is a wildlands firefigther who worked on the Wallow fire and has been at the Las Conchas fire within hours of its onset. I’m grateful for every bit of information I can get my hands on.
And it’s not just the IMT’s. At least three of the GACC’s (Southwest, East Basin, and Rocky Mountain) have stopped updating the “unable to fill” lists on their websites. The UTF lists were a valuable tool in identifying when to clear the calendar and place oneself available for dispatch, at least for those with other job duties besides simply waiting for the phone to ring. That valuable source of information has been silenced this season as well, and unfortunately that information is not readily available anywhere, leaving some to wonder if it’s worth the hassle of being “on call until dispatched”.
Uncle Louie… you hit the nail on the head.
The fire information on the recent series of fires in Region 3 has been deplorable. The Los Conchas, Monument and Wallow fires simply have not put the information out.
The Firefighters are working for the public and the public has every right to know conditions on the fire. To simply state that “numerous residences are threatened ” is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
What communities are at risk ? What roads and groups of homes are threatened ?
These fire teams have seem to place no impotence on information flow. A plan is created twice daily with maps and perceived threats. There is no reason that the Information Group cannot use that plan to prepare timely press releases.
I would grade the Public Information Group on both the IMT’s and the Area Command Teams a “F” on this series of fires.
Royal Burnett
I’d agree that the info flow for the fires this year has been less than ideal.
I wonder how many people are assigned to an IMT team that focus purely on PIO duties? 5 or 6 if they are lucky? A good way to handle it is order more PIO teams, but they would get audited
and the GAO/OIG would want to know why they are spending all this money on PIO’s. The NPS has 1 full time Fire PIO for the Southwest(OK, AZ, NM, TX).
You want to know what is going on best thing you could do is write a letter to Congress and let them know you support funding more full time PIO positions and while your at it tell them how much you appreciate the wildland firefighters that protect communities and homes when a fire breaks out.
I’ll give them a B. Takes one good fire season to blow the cobwebs out.
In the meantime we have Wildland Fire Today to fill in the gaps and give us real perspective of what is going on out there.
Most everything said is correct, however the issue is not Info people not wanting to tell the story or to be timely. Rather it is the instance on the agencies, the big green one in particular, that InciWeb be the only “official voice” and modern social media outlets may not be used except to point viewers to InciWeb. Lack of trust in the Info folks is stifling the agencies ability to join the 21st century communication technologies.
Do you have a site that maintains acurrent map of the fires in New Mexico? thank you!
Today InciWeb has some current maps of the fire.