The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) has added the DoD as a primary member of its executive board.
“A key function of NWCG is the establishment of standards for the wildland fire community,” said Shane McDonald, NWCG Executive Board Chair. “With the addition of DoD to the Executive Board, they will now be a part of the process to help create the common operating framework for wildland fire resources.”
Across its 27 million acres of land used for training and testing, DoD manages about a million acres for wildland fire, according to a press release from the Homeland Security news. Including the DoD on the NWCG board acknowledges the cross-jurisdictional nature of wildfire and will contribute to the interagency approach of the federal agencies in charge of fire management.
NWCG provides national leadership to enable coordinated wildland fire operations among federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners. Other primary members of NWCG include the Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Association of State Foresters, U.S. Fire Administration, Intertribal Timber Council, and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Associate members include the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire and the National Weather Service. The NWCG priorities include training, operations standards, qualifications, IT requirements, research, policy, and safety. More info is available on the NWCG website.
No need for feuding,
We are all type A, or A/B personalities with possible borderline OCD, or ADHD tendencies. We are a profession of people who like to see things done the right way. to join I have to do is show effort dedication prove yourself to others. Couple of the benefits include helping people out and when cohesive and functioning properly pride of the team your with managing the mayhem safely with.
Drawbacks of our personality traits are our ego group, some grow false senses of entitlements for everything and lastly old crotchety folks who look back to longingly on yester year.
Everybody hates change people, but without change, we would still be up in the trees or something. Look when you took the job you knew at any second any moment of your day stuff was gonna happen. So you and your group would go over wherever the problem was, to scope it out knock, or hash it out, maybe throw something’s out and more than likely break something try to figure what it’s all about. No matter, because before you leave safety and harmony will be restored for those living about. Anyways folks told me to not get all riled up on a new person or idea. Even if others say I should. Here is why, people are petty, false or just plain stupid sometimes. So I always make my own decisions on things. It is truely my path anyways so what they say isn’t going to help in the end.
lastly, let me give you some advice about old DOD. This was soundly given to me from day one at the last place I was at before I retired. Mr. Giorgianni,
We are not staffed and funded or resource for this mission. If they don’t get some rewards they won’t let others grow, incompetence is DOD’s biggest problem. This may be the flavor of the week but it won’t last long guys. They’re not that cohesive someone will soon rip it down and tear it up and shred it up. That’s what those people live for, they are the chaos.
Some are confusing calling up active duty/guard to provide support during extreme wildfire conditions/operations (temporary short term) with regular/routine wildfire and Rx burn needs/use on DOD lands, work primarily performed by civilian DOD personnel. Past wildland fire training/requirements for DOD employees have been highly variable depending on an installation’s location, fire history (wildfire vs Rx fire), coordination difficulties with adjacent gov agency landowners on fires that cross boundaries, opinions/viewpoints of non-fire command/supervisor hierarchy, etc, etc. This lifts (most) every DOD employee involved to some degree with wildland and/or Rx fire up to accepted national training standards for the fire duties they perform to support installation operations.
Regarding thoughts of a ready replacement “army” to deal with “excessive” grumbling over the host of challenges other Alphabet Agency fire employees have faced for decades – you can pretty well bet that deployments to non-DOD incidents will be voluntary and at the discretion of individual post commands and will more likely lean to Single Resource rather than crews or strike teams if they’re approved. That’s not to say there could be extra pressure placed “encouraging” commands to increase deployments during extreme conditions, but limited will likely be the case most of the time. Training missions and installation operations continue 24/7/365 with staffing limitations, and most of that staff wear many more hats than just wildland fire. Also likely that a fairly sizeable proportion of DOD civilians may be certified at the Moderate fitness level rather than Arduous since Rx burns are a primary focus for many installations, with large on-post wildfires occurring less frequently, with heavy equipment readily available and regularly used on easily accessible ground instead of organized hand crews for suppression of the many small wildfire events that can occur. That would limit en-mass deployments to primary wildfire fireline assignments as well. Just a nickel’s worth.
The Guard have certainly earned a seat at the table.
For instance: I recall a story from the Camp Fire about a young woman who’s house burned. She joined CalGuard and was deployed for traffic control at the Dixie Fire, or maybe Caldor Fire. A few years ago, a CalFire chief was reactivated as a Lt. Col (?) to help lead TF Rattlesnake and associated programs. This seems like the normal outcome of bigger and bigger TF deployments.
There is already a lot of cross-traffic of pilots transitioning between military and civilian agencies via the auspices of DynCorp, et. al.
Formalizing the role makes obvious what was uncertain, and orderly what was ad hoc. One might hope it will improve the Surplus programs, but such things are still largely dependent on what the Congress does on the spot, anyways.
In 1994 there were many hundreds of newly trained Army firefighters from Fort Hood helping out in a big way in Montana and other locations across the West.
Better integration of DoD assets like Task Force Rattlesnake with Hotshots is to everyone’s benefit. CalGuard has demonstrated again and again how to transition from warfighting to firefighting without missing a beat and the story of locals joining the Guard and performing fire-related missions like Type 2 crewing, traffic control, medic search and rescue and resource mitigation in the places they come frrom are sometimes the centerpieces of a large fire.
I think the Guard deserve a seat at the table, first and foremost. Notwithstanding negotiations of training and safety standards, DoD fire chiefs and departments are every bit the measure of their civilian peers in terms of competency and experience, (where they can successfully navigate the truth that you cannot deceive the wind, the rain and the water.) There is simply no substitute for a competent pioneer, sapper or combat engineer spending time with the landscape and the science.
Aviation programs are another broad topic. Pilots and aircraft support regularly pass between the civilian and military roles during their careers through the auspices of DynCorp, etc.
I think this is a welcome development, where the DoD can spare the resources for the humanitarian mission beyond responsibility for the disposition of their own bases, they should be considered part of the normal buffet of choices; competent, with fitting equipment and equipment training, and able to fill NIMS/ICS slots in extended attack.
From tricks up the sleeve, to resources on the table, my experiences working with and around Guard units have been positive.
DOD has many natural resources management personnel who not only utilize fire as a tool, but also suppress wildfires on DOD lands. Most of these folks are civilian employees. Farther down the DOD chain, US Army Corps of Engineers NRM employees need to become red carded/become players within the National Wildland Fire Management community with training, deployment opportunities and resource utilization opportunities (Rx burn crews, suppression, etc). This is not military taking over civilian roles, this is natural resource management agencies becoming more cohesive in wildland fire management! This is good! [Retired USACE; 17 years in USFS/BLM fire management roles prior to USACE]
A welcome idea long overdue.
BUT
DoD has its mission and if one looks deeply enough Big Army used to have logging and sawmill operations. They have the their own base foresters.
Let’s no lambaste them(DoD) for their budgets….they have their own problems that probably eclipse the LMAs
Only the LMAs need to do a better job in their Stateside budgets because the LMA war on fire is probably is on par with what we have spent or some peoples minds…wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pick yur battles….criticism needs to cease on DoD. When LMAs gets its world in order..the world of the Bigger Green Machine has far more reaching operations and personnel that Albuquerque HRC could only dream about…..?
Hope they can bring some money to the table. All the other fed agencies that make up NWCG are just a part of the .4% of the discretionary fed budget, while DoD makes up about 40%
1987 was first time I worked with the Guard on fires. Let’s remember that lots of bases have vegetation management programs. I have had the privilege of teaching a good grip of USAF folks Basic Wildland and S212 so the want and need is there.
Furthermore, I wouldn’t worry too much these DOD guys taking over your jobs. Most base chiefs don’t like Wildland hate any of their toys to be out of their hands so you will only see the DOD’s when the drawdown is real bad. Also, the ones you’ll see will be dedicated professionals, and they should responsibly relay to you their experience levels, and will accept where you decide to plug them in. Give them a chance there’s some bad ass guys out there, who are in it to win it. Most likely they volunteered for the show, while the rest bitch from their recliners about everything and anything.These guys wanna learn, and deserve to learn so teach them the right way. I’ll get off my soapbox now. Always look up, look down and look around.
about damn time.
I am apart of the old guard. I started working on the LPNF engine 71 starting in 1993. Then I joined Vandenberg Hotshots in1998. At that time we were close with the Los Prietos Hotshots so I knew Sup Mark and future Sup Stan. I was at the R5 hotshots conference when we’re allowed to call ourselves a Hotshots crew R5 only due to our missile base mission. We were voted in by every region five crew. San Diego conference I believe it was 1999 or 2000 so they excepted us DOD’s I believe the rest of you should too. They’re long gone now, but I’m still alive and ready to cut some damn line or teach someone to do it right. But no one in the damn Forest Service will hire me what the hell is that about? Vandenberg Hotshots Crew Captain Shawn Giorgianni 1998- 2002.
More and more military participation every year now, especially boots on the ground in suppression roles. I can remember when I was a squadie and 70 National guardspeople would arrive to help prep roads and install a hoselay but left at 1700 sharp while we burned out all night…mostly helpful though.
Go ahead and scream at me but…is a militaristic “fire is the enemy” going to help our American fuel loading?
Is this growing reliance on DoD a response to our current Fire management personnel issues where they refuse to be technicians and demand more pay…could it be.”go ahead and gripe we got lots of boots ready over here” (?)
LOL Not worried about boots replacing us. Most of DOD fire is civilian federal employees not active duty troops, so if DOD somehow expanded it’s wildland ops enough to be a replacement for fire personnel in the land management agencies….it’d be replaced by the current fire personnel in the land management agencies…they’d just become DOD employees and would not be classified as forestry technicians and probably with more pay.