News and opinion about wildland fire
There was a four-alarm brush fire on Staten Island, New York late this afternoon in Great Kills Park (map).
I am not totally sure, but I think Great Kills Park is a unit within the Gateway National Recreation Area, which is part of the National Park Service.
The National Incident Management Organization has written a Social Media Guide for Incidents. Centered around the application Twitter, which limits a message to 140 characters, the draft manual is 85 pages long. The document also covers other social media tools, search engines, Facebook, photo storage and distribution, and applications that make it easier to work with Twitter. This could be a very useful manual for someone who knows nothing about these applications.
Here is the cover of the draft document.
Helitack firefighters with a lot of time on their hands have made another video.
Update March 31, 2010:
The video has been removed by YouTube. As it says there:
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Christopher Teter BLM/Forest Service.
Copyright claim, huh? 🙂
And, just in case even the cover shot disappears from YouTube, here is a screen grab:
via @ENeitzel
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UPDATE: March 5, 2010
Casey let us know that the video has reappeared on LiveLeak. We are embedding it here for your viewing pleasure.
I like the shot of the Sky Crane dipping in the background, surrounded by mist. You can judge for yourself which version of Poker Face you like better. This one, or Lady Gaga’s. Thankfully, the firefighters were not dressed like the people in Lady Gaga’s video.
The South Carolina Forestry Commission has released their after action report on the Highway 31 fire that started on April 22, 2009 near Myrtle Beach. Among the 63 issues and 76 recommendations, it unsurprisingly lists communications as one of the primary issues. I don’t think I have ever seen an after action report on a major fire that did not identify communications as a problem. Wildfire Today covered the fire here.
Here is an excerpt from the executive summary:
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The Forestry Commission was requested by Horry County Fire-Rescue to respond to a small wildfire just after noon on April 22, 2009. The fire grew rapidly over the next 36 hours, and ultimately burned 19,130 acres, destroyed 76 homes, damaged 97 additional homes, and caused two firefighters to deploy fire shelters and three firefighters to retreat to a safety zone to avoid serious injuries. The extreme behavior led to the evacuation of more than 2,500 residents before it was declared controlled on May 20. Agency expenditures related to the Highway 31 Fire totaled approximately $1.5 million. Estimated losses to insured property exceeded $25 million, and damage to timber is estimated at approximately $17 million.
The Highway 31 Fire was the worst wildland-urban interface fire in the history of the state, and represents the largest mobilization of SCFC resources to a wildfire on record. The rapid rate of spread and extreme fire behavior of this fire presented many challenges to the agency, and this review has identified 63 issues and 76 recommendations to address them. The key findings of this report include:
UPDATE March 11, 2010:
The North Myrtle Beach City Council at their meeting last week discussed, in response to this fire, budgeting to add a brush truck and a ladder truck to their fire department. Right. You can never have too many ladder trucks at a vegetation fire.
The International Association of Wildland Fire is accepting applications until March 31 for two scholarships. It is open to Master of Science or Ph.D. students studying wildland fire or wildland fire-related topics. Each scholarship is valued at $2,500 USD…nothing to sneeze at.
It is great that the IAWF is doing this, and it could really help two graduate students. Maybe in the future they can offer scholarships to wildfire fire students in a 4-year Bachelor of Science program.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized4 Comments on NIMO teams to accept temporary trainees 
The Washington office of the US Forest Service sent a memo to the field announcing a pilot program in which the National Incident Management Organization teams will accept up to four trainee or “journeymen” individuals in order to “streamline and build capacity”. Here is an excerpt from the memo, which was signed by James Hubbard, Deputy Chief, State and Private Forestry, and dated March 4, 2010.
As cited in the Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) 5-Year Strategy for Large Fire Management (Jacobs Report), there is a need to streamline training and build capacity. As a result, FAM is initiating an accelerated incident management training and qualification pilot program. This pilot program will assign and cover the expense for up to four trainees/journeymen to each National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team for up to 120 days. The trainees/journeymen will be given a development plan that focuses on accelerated training and experience necessary to enhance incident qualifications.
Each trainee/journeyman must be available for up to 120 days to complete the training and experience requirements. There are no prerequisite expectations in terms of current qualifications. This opportunity will require a commitment over team assignments/single resource assignments to ensure a focused experience.
This may be related to the January announcement that the National Wildfire Coordinating Group was going to re-think the “number, type, and configuration of the national Incident Management Teams (Type 1, Type 2, and Area Command).” And both announcements may be a result of difficulties in filling positions on IMTeams and consistently having team members available for multiple two to three week assignments throughout a fire season.
A couple of the terms and statements in the memo are interesting. The term “journeyman” is not commonly used in incident management organizations. Usually it means someone has served as an apprentice and is qualified for the position, such as a plumber’s apprentice advancing to become a fully qualified, but minimally experienced, plumber. Maybe in this case they mean an applicant for one of these positions could be fully qualified for the position for which they are applying. But why do this? To obtain more experience? A little more clarity would have been helpful.
The other surprise is this:
There are no prerequisite expectations in terms of current qualifications.
Does this mean that a trainee Resource Unit Leader would be considered for a temporary position on a NIMO team that is comprised only of Command and General Staff positions two levels higher than a Resources Unit Leader?
As we said on January 22, we support substantially increasing the size of NIMO teams, but adding four trainees will not accomplish that goal. But it may help a few people to gain some experience and perhaps get some task books signed off.
