THIS IS a temporary post,
in the aftermath of numerous fatalities on fires this season,
and considering the comments posted publicly on both sites and the piles of emails I’m getting privately from readers,
and I’d really like for all of our readers to review these two posts,
both written by Bill Gabbert and fully endorsed today by me.
Examples of catastrophic events on wildland fires that led to changes
— AND —
Thank you.
~ Kelly Andersson
My first fire was in 1975. That said, in 1994 I was a sector boss in SE Montana. There was a very significant change in fire behavior, in my opinion, in 1994. Fires many miles from us were creating fire behaviors on our fire. You couldn’t go direct in timber, and had to retreat to more defensible lower ground. It was just a very significant time tochange how we fought fire. I retired as a FMO and then was an AD ATGS. Fast aggressive initial attack was imperative, and transferring risk to aerial resources wasn’t a good second alternative.
Bottom line is 1994 should have been a wake up call to all fire professionals that what had worked before wasn’t working anymore and we needed to change our mindset.
Thanks
Reminders should always be welcome.