The National Wildfire Coordinating Group has decided to make a major change in the configuration of Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams (IMTs). Saying “the current workforce management and succession planning for wildfire incident management is not sustainable”, the plan is for Type 1 Incident Management Teams and Type 2 Incident Management Teams to evolve into “Complex IMTs”.

Going forward the organization will be recognizing three levels of interagency wildland fire response: Initial Attack, Extended Attack, and Complex. As part of this transition, State and Federally sponsored Type 1 and Type 2 Wildland Fire IMTs will evolve into “Complex IMTs” utilizing current Type 1 standards as their guiding principles.

This change was a product of the Evolving Incident Management project which recommended a reduction in federally sponsored IMTs from the current 53 to 40, with State sponsored teams assisting with a national surge capacity. There is still a lot to be figured out, including transition plans, the distribution of IMTs across the Geographic Areas, and their capacity to sponsor and fill the positions on the teams.

The memo from the NWCG.

Thanks go out to Ken