About one-third of the Hotshot Crews that started the season are still working
Continue readingArea Command Team prepares analysis of firefighting needs for the rest of the year
Area Command Team 2 led by Tim Sexton was assigned to the Southern California Operations Center in mid-September to assist with strategic planning for the rest of the fire year.
These screen shots are borrowed from a PowerPoint presentation the team developed (3.6 Mb) of the likely fire activity, scheduled resource availability, likely resources needs, the gap between needs and availability, and suggestions on how to address the gap.
The group looked back at the previous four years of fire activity and the use of firefighting resources to help predict what the needs are going to be during the rest of the calendar year, or “Fire Year” as we are hearing these days. Of those four years, one was an outlier, 2019, with much less fire activity than average, so it was not used to predict resource needs. The 2,210,266 acres burned in the 49 states outside of Alaska in 2019 was the lowest total since 2004. Almost twice that many acres have already burned in just California so far this year, according to CAL FIRE October 2, 2020.
The slides shown here are 11 of the 15 in the presentation.
Oregon fires have burned about a million acres
An Area Command Team has been mobilized to assist local units in the state
Continue readingThree Area Command Teams activated for COVID-19 pandemic
They will develop protocols and wildfire response plans for maintaining dispatching, initial attack, and extended attack capability
Continue readingNational MAC Group encourages use of Area Command Teams
Some members of the teams may lose currency due to a lack of assignments
Continue readingFirefighters are busy in the Northern Rockies
12 Incident Management Teams and no Area Command Teams are assigned.
Continue readingArea Command Team ordered for southeast Arizona fires
Rowdy Muir’s Area Command Team (ACT) has been mobilized to the Coronado National Forest. This is somewhat surprising because ACT’s have, in my opinion, been significantly underutilized for the last several years.
The June 26 National Situation Report listed two large fires on the Coronado.
The Saddle Fire, not listed above, has burned almost 5,000 acres 19 miles northeast of Douglas since it started June 24.
In the 24 hour period that ended Sunday morning approximately 392 lightning strikes were detected in the Forest.
An ACT may be used to oversee the management of large incidents or those to which multiple Incident Management Teams have been assigned. They can take some of the workload off the local administrative unit when they have multiple incidents going at the same time. Your typical Forest or Park is not usually staffed to supervise two or more Incident Management Teams fighting fire in their area. An ACT can provide decision support to Multi-Agency Coordination Groups for allocating scarce resources and help mitigate the span of control for the local Agency Administrator. They also ensure that incidents are properly managed, coordinate team transitions, and evaluate Incident Management Teams.
National ACTs are managed by the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC) and are comprised of the following:
- Area Commander (ACDR);
- Assistant Area Commander, Planning (AAPC);
- Assistant Area Commander, Logistics (AALC);
- Area Command Aviation Coordinator (ACAC); and
- Two trainees.
They usually have an additional 2 to 15 specialists, including Fire Information, Situation Unit Leader, Resource Unit Leader, and sometimes others such as Safety, and Long Term Planning, or assistants in Planning, Logistics, or Aviation.
In 2015 the number of ACT’s was cut from four to three.
This year, besides Rowdy Muir, the other two Area Commanders of the teams are Joe Stutler and Tim Sexton.
Number of Area Command Teams reduced from 4 to 3
The lineup for the Area Command Teams (ACT) has been announced and the number of Teams has been reduced from four to three.
Jennifer Jones, spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service in Boise, told us the reason for the change:
Based on analysis of Area Command Team use over the past 15 years, it was determined that 3 Teams were adequate.
An ACT may be used to oversee the management of large incidents or those to which multiple Incident Management Teams have been assigned. They can take some of the workload off the local administrative unit when they have multiple incidents going at the same time. Your typical Forest or Park is not usually staffed to supervise two or more Incident Management Teams fighting fire in their area. An ACT can provide decision support to Multi-Agency Coordination Groups for allocating scarce resources and help mitigate the span of control for the local Agency Administrator. They also ensure that incidents are properly managed, coordinate team transitions, and evaluate Incident Management Teams.
National ACTs are managed by the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC) and are comprised of the following:
- Area Commander (ACDR);
- Assistant Area Commander, Planning (AAPC);
- Assistant Area Commander, Logistics (AALC);
- Area Command Aviation Coordinator (ACAC); and
- Two trainees.
They usually have an additional 2 to 15 specialists, including Fire Information, Situation Unit Leader, Resource Unit Leader, and sometimes others such as Safety, and Long Term Planning, or assistants in Planning, Logistics, or Aviation.
This year the ACT lineup looks like this, according to the ACT website:
Dugger Hughes ACDR
Paul Summerfelt ACPC
Rich Rusk ACLC
Yolanda Saldana ACAC
Boo Walker ACDR
Jim Jaminet ACPC
Butch Hayes ACLC
Mike Dudley ACAC
Bill Van Bruggen ACDR
Joe Ribar ACPC
Martin Maricle ACLC
Rich Webster ACAC
The Area Commander not on the list this year after serving on ACTs for nine years (2006 – 2014) is Jim Loach.
Area Commanders serve for a three-year term, after which they can apply for any of the other three Assistant Area Commander positions if they wish to continue to serve on the team. They may be selected as an Area Commander for up to an additional 3 years, if there are no other qualified applicants.
Type 1 Incident Commanders are managed in a similar manner for the most part. Generally they serve for three years and then must re-apply.
We have been told that the National Wildfire Coordination Group has been pushing to “re-form” the Type 1 teams each year, with a yearly application and re-selection process. It seems to us that would be a detriment to the TEAM concept.
Wildfire briefing, February 25, 2014
Insurance companies cancel policies
Some homeowners in the Scripps Ranch area near San Diego have received notices that their policies are being cancelled. The residents live near the areas that burned catastrophically in 2003 or 2007, fires that destroyed thousands of homes and took 16 lives. According to an article at 10news, one of the homeowners said, “They canceled us and also several people on our street, saying they couldn’t renew our policy because we were too close to the brush line.”
Which area near Colorado Springs will be next?
Some residents in the Colorado Springs area are a little concerned about the vulnerability of their homes after the fire disasters of 2012 and 2013. Last year the Black Forest Fire just north of Colorado Springs destroyed approximately 480 structures, and in 2012 the Waldo Canyon Fire on the other side of the city wiped out 347 homes. There is concern now that the Broadmoor area could be susceptible to fires that start in the Cheyenne Mountain area. Fox21 news has more details.
Two Senators on the same page as President Obama about fire funding
Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have praised President Obama for proposing that wildfires be funded in a manner similar to other natural disasters. Monday the President met with most of the nation’s governors and told them that wildfire funding in the administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2015 would be similar to provisions in a bill introduced in the House, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2014 (H.R. 3992), which would create an emergency funding process for fire response. If enacted, it would mean the federal land management agencies would no longer have to rob dollars from routine ongoing non-fire activities to pay unusually high fire suppression expenses.
Tom Zimmerman lectured at the University of Montana
Tom Zimmerman, a former Area Commander and Type 1 Incident Commander, lectured at the University of Montana on February 20. He was the first speaker in the Mike & Mabelle Hardy Fire Management Lecture Series which was established through an estate gift from Mike Hardy, a 1939 alumnus of the School of Forestry. Now the President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, Dr. Zimmerman, had a key role when he worked for the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service in promoting, training for, and establishing procedures for managing wildfires that are not fully suppressed. In fact, he has the dubious honor of being instrumental in coining some of the terms for these fires, including “fire use fire” and “fire for resource benefits”. Below is an excerpt from an article in the Missoulian about his lecture.
“…Fire has a natural role in the environment and we need to embrace that and accept that,” Zimmerman said. But we also need to keep preventing human-caused, unwanted fires. And we have to understand that the firefighting tools we have aren’t designed to protect the thousands of private homes that now stand at risk of wildland fires.
“You’ve got to keep working with your communities to explain what’s going on,” Zimmerman said. “You’ve got to keep laying out the facts. But there’s a threshold to understanding, and I don’t know if you can keep that buy-in for very long when people are breathing smoke all summer. We talk about restoring fire as a natural process, and then you have one that burns five times as much as the plan calls for. You can’t say, well we won’t burn anything for the next five years.”
12 Questions for Dave Nelson
Today we have the 13th article of our series in which we ask current and retired leaders in the wildland fire service to answer 12 questions.
We appreciate everyone who is cooperating with this project. Some of their responses may add to the knowledge base of our new firefighters coming up through the ranks. If you would like to nominate someone who would be a good candidate for these questions, drop us a line through our Contact Us page; and their contact information would be appreciated.
Below we hear from Dave Nelson. When he retired from the U.S. Forest Service Mr. Nelson was the Forest Fire Management Officer for the Tahoe National Forest in California. He was an Area Commander, and also served as a Type 1 Incident Commander on an Incident Management Team from 1975 through 1983.
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When you think of an excellent leader in the fire service, who comes to mind first?
I have had the privilege to work with many, but Doug Leisz and Lynn Biddison stand out. Why? Doug was the Line Boss on the Volcano Fire in 1961 (one of my first major fires as a sector boss with 100 farm workers and Lynn was the Fire Boss on the Wellman Fire in 1966 when I led a smoke jumper crew on the first jump on a Southern California fire. Doug was a well respected leader throughout the USFS and wildland fire management and was the primary supporter and mover on the “Safety First” effort in the PSW Region. Lynn was a well respected leader in wildland fire management throughout the USFS and particularly in the SW and PSW Regions. Both gentlemen continue to be active leaders in national fire management.
What is one piece of advice you would give to someone before their first assignment as an Incident Commander?
Delegate authority to your primary staff and hold them accountable – and pay attention to the details – especially the basics.
If someone is planning a prescribed fire, what is one thing that you hope they will pay particular attention to?
Obviously it is important to establish good parameters and conform to them, but most of our prescribed fires do not escape during ignition. Most escape after the primary burning phase has ended. Advice – pay attention to the weather and get out there before the wind starts blowing.
One of the more common errors in judgment you have seen on fires?
Pounding a rolling fire with aerial retardant drops.
One thing that you know now that you wish you had known early in your career?
Really – I wish “I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” – that we would ignore the basics like fighting fire at night, going direct, hanging in tight to the fire edge.
The stupidest mistake you have seen on a fire?
Keeping ground forces in camp due to light rain, but continuing to drop water and retardant from helicopters plus what I said earlier about using aerial retardant on a fast, moving fire – especially one advancing uphill.
Your most memorable fire?
Lots, but probably the Marblecone (1977) on the Los Padres National Forest and the Panorama (1980) on the San Bernardino National Forest as a Fire Boss and IC, but also the Bear Fire (1970) on my district (Big Bear) also on the San Bernardino while the district ranger.
The first very large fire you were on?
Alaska, 1956
—Your favorite book about fire or firefighting?
Burning an Empire
—The first job you had within the fire service?
Fire Control Aide for the BLM in Alaska
—What gadgets, electronic or otherwise, can’t you live without?
I prefer to have my laptop and cell phone, but I think I could live without them.